Press Releases

The Liberty Caucus welcomes the end of mandatory vehicle inspections

For Immediate Release

State Representative Henry Giasson released the following statement after Governor Ayotte signed HB2, the State Budget:

"The Auto Inspection Scam is coming to an end!

"After many years of government enforced private vendor inspections as a requirement for Granite Staters to be allowed to drive on our own public roadways, a full repeal of the inspection program was included in HB2.

"Opponents of the bill argued that insurance premiums may rise, that without government mandates people would become deliberately negligent causing unsafe conditions, and that mechanics depend on the business that inspections bring. Here are the truths on those issues:

"Insurance mandates would increase premiums. The vehicle inspection program is completely unrelated. New Hampshire’s insurance is kept low by the fact that it is not government mandated, which means that there is a competitive free market to earn your business. In states where insurance is mandated, the companies can often set their prices higher because you must purchase it as a condition of operating or even registration. These two issues are often conflated, but it is truly a straw man argument as they are not associated at all.

"We join the 40 states that do not have inspection mandates. A commonality among states with and without inspection mandates is that accidents caused by mechanical failure hover between 4% and 5% with 12% concluding that maintenance may have been a factor but not the prime factor. This does not change based on whether the state has a mandated inspection or not. The liability for equipment failure is still on the operator, not on the mechanic or maintenance station regardless of inspection mandate. This literally meant that paying for an inspection station did not shift liability or responsibility.

"The claims that mechanics lose money by not issuing inspection stickers is a fallacy. A state inspection done properly takes about a half hour. The average shop rate for a technician in NH is $140 per hour. Inspections tend to be about $40. This is a delta of $30 per half hour. The only profit margin would be if a shop can ‘up sell’ a repair. This has been widely believed to have caused a conflict of interest leading to unethical practices by some vendors and the feeling by citizens of being ‘held hostage’ by a shop and put in a circumstance of either having to break the law, or not go to work. Any shop can tell you if there is a maintenance concern upcoming, and good vendors will

"Finally, because the program was unchecked and able to expand upon itself through rules writing authority for so long, and because all attempts to regulate the state inspection program by legislation were blocked. The program became toxic and out of control. Vehicles were failing for surface rust even after a law was passed removing surface rust as a consideration. Inspection failures included accessory lights that were neither safety nor signaling lights such as logos and roof lights. The check engine light, or OBD diagnostic system, which is an electrical system, was interpreted by the state as an automatic emissions failure. What began as a fifteen point safety program became a 2” thick fine print binder of how a dealership could give you the choice of upsell or fail. All of this along with the date being by birth date meant that if you identified a maintenance concern that was not urgent or germane to safety, that unless you had an indoor facility, self repair was not an option for many people.

"In the end, overturning this predatory law which disproportionately impacted the less financially secure will not make our roads less safe. You can still have a mechanic inspect your vehicle any time you wish. All that it means is that the police can not fine you for driving to work without a sticker on your vehicle if you maintain it and operate it in a safe manner."

The Liberty Caucus would also like to wish a happy birthday to our Governor, Kelly Ayotte.

The Liberty Caucus supports HB1 and HB2.

For Immediate Release

The New Hampshire Liberty Caucus has come together and decided that we will support HB2, the budget trailer bill. We do this unenthusiastically, but in the spirit of compromise and cooperation.

Before the Governor's budget came out, we requested $1 billion dollars in cuts. We worked hard to identify places to cut and provide this information to those on the Finance Committee. It took hours upon hours of effort from both legislators and citizen activists, and many of those cuts did not make it into the final version of the budget. When the House version of HB2 included Group 2 reforms of the sort that would almost certainly require a sales tax or income tax to maintain, an effort was made to simply table the budget. After discussion, we decided to allow HB2 out of the House... not for our sake, but for the sake of our colleagues who had great interest in the budget passing.

Many of us are not happy with the Group 2 compromise. The reason for this is that even the toned-down version of Group 2 reform that came out of the Committee of Conference would put retirement benefits for Group 2 first responders leagues above anything that is offered in the private sector, in defiance of the Republican Party Platform and the principles of liberty. We should ensure that public employee benefits are similar to and do not exceed those of the private sector, like it says we ought to in the NH Republican Party Platform.

Almost none of our constituents are fortunate enough to retire in their 40s with a pension. Many of our constituents will never retire, and will instead work until they die. Millennials and Generation Z voters are unlikely to ever have Social Security to fall back on, even though they pay in hand over fist to this ill-conceived Ponzi scheme. It is unconscionable to require that taxpayers should foot the bill to allow government employees to retire early.

That being said, the new compromise on HB2 does include provisions to limit spiking (the unethical practice of working excessive amounts of overtime for the last few years of ones career in order to "spike" ones pension benefits for the rest of ones life). We also recognize the good work of those on the committee to pare back the Group 2 reforms to roughly a third of the cost, even if the end price is still exorbitant.

On top of that, the budget contains provisions that meet the requirements that we made before the Committee of Conference. It repeals auto inspections, which will positively affect the finances of everyone in this state who drives a motor vehicle. It maintains Medicaid work requirements. It gets rid of rulemaking for the Vaccine Schedule. It does not introduce any new taxes. It reduces UNH funding significantly. These are priority issues for the Liberty Caucus, and the budget addresses these issues, therefore compromise is acceptable on this front.

For these reasons, and not the problems cited above, the Liberty Caucus will maintain its commitment to support HB1 and HB2

It is often said that the sign of a good compromise is that both sides walk away unhappy, and this is surely the case. We would ask our colleagues who want to throw in with our mutual ideological and political opponents, the Democrats, in order to coerce more out of the budget to consider this when deciding how they will vote on HB2.