Paul Sassone

Don’t you get sick and tired of being government’s piggy bank?

Local officials want to be more green, so you and I can’t use plastic grocery bags and we have to pay for those bags deemed acceptable.

Cook County government is short of cash, so you and I should have to pay an arm and a leg in taxes on soft drinks.

Illinois government is in a perpetual economic meltdown, so it is making it harder for you and I to have our cars’ emissions tested.

With as little publicity as possible the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA)  has closed five emissions testing stations — 6959 W. Forest Preserve Drive in Chicago, 1850 W. Webster Ave. in Chicago, 2450 Landmeier Road in Elk Grove Village, 7460 Bavan Drive, in Tinley Park and 230 N. Old St. Louis Road in Wood River.

There are now 12 emission testing sites in Illinois — Bedford Park, Crystal Lake, Joliet, Lincolnshire, Markham, Naperville, Schaumburg, Waukegan, Pontoon Beach (Pontoon Beach?!), Addison and Skokie.

State statute requires that no one can be more than 12 miles from an emissions testing station. Of course I haven’t done a mileage check.

But none of these towns is close to me.

But, wait, the IEPA has an online testing site locator. Unfortunately I couldn’t get it to work.

The IEPA acts as if it is doing us a favor by all of this. The “new” tests are “more efficient,” “less expensive” have “flexible schedules” and “expanded Saturday hours.”

I have no idea where I will have to go for an emissions test unless I can get the damned locater to work.

And all this for an emissions test I don’t want in the first place and which doesn’t solve our pollution problem.

These emissions tests were required by the Federal Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990 for areas that did not meet government air quality standards.

Well, it’s been 26 years and the air quality standards still have not been met. So, dragging us all around to testing stations doesn’t seem to work. And if we keep on doing what we’re doing we’ll keep on getting what we’re getting — polluted air.

Want clean air? Go to the source, the corporations that manufacture automobiles. Require them to build cleaner cars. And let those corporations be emissions tested.

What I’d like to see is all of us rise up and refuse to have our cars’ emissions tested.

But then, we’d just be fined.

More money to the state from us, the government’s piggy bank.

That piggy bank should be jingling nicely.

The IEPA estimates the state will save $11 million a year under the new emissions testing set-up.

–Fewer emissions testing stations  is a real stinker–