You asked for a chronology of the federal Clean Air Act (CAA) fee on vehicle registrations and renewals and how fee is used.

CLEAN AIR ACT FEE (CGS § 14-49B)

The fee was established in 1993 by PA 93-235. The act required the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to charge a $ 4 CAA fee on all renewals of vehicle registrations except vehicles that are (1) electrically powered, (2) exempt from registration fees, or (3) not self-propelled (e. g. , trailers). PA 94-189 allowed vehicle owners 65 or older who choose to renew their registrations for one year instead of two to pay the fee for only one year. PA 98-1, June Special Session, made a technical change. PA 01-6, June Special Session, increased the renewal fee from $ 4 to $ 10 for vehicles with two-year registration periods and to $ 5 for vehicles with one-year registrations and applied the increased fee to new registrations.

Originally, the law required all of the fee revenue to be deposited in the CAA account in the General Fund. The account may be used to cover state agency costs incurred in implementing the 1990 CAA amendments that are not otherwise paid for by the Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) air permit fees. (As described in OLR report 94-R-0749, the 1990 amendments made the CAA more stringent and included several provisions that affected the vehicle emissions inspection program. ) The account is primarily used to fund DEP staff who enforce air pollution laws, develop the state implementation plan required under the CAA, and perform other functions. The DEP commissioner, in consultation with the DMV commissioner, must annually prepare a budget for the account to cover the costs of implementing the CAA amendments, to the extent that these costs have not been funded from other sources. The budget must include an estimate of revenues from other fees required by law and other revenue sources to meet the costs charged to the account. The commissioners must submit the budget to the Office of Policy and Management secretary, who must approve it 30 days before the start of the fiscal year. The secretary can make changes to the budget that the DEP commissioner agrees to.

PA 01-6, June Special Session changed the way the fee revenue is appropriated. It splits the fee revenue between the Special Transportation Fund (57. 5%) and the CAA account (42. 5%). The Special Transportation Fund is used for a wide range of transportation purposes, including highway construction and the subsidization of public transportation.

KM: ro