Opinion: Arizona, invent us out of emissions testing

With the highly consequential midterm elections just a week away, it's time to get down to brass tacks; it's time to tackle the big issues.

Emissions testing.

Every year, approximately 2 million Arizonans drive to an emissions testing station designated by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ). Get a ticket. Wait. Hope that your car isn't still angry about the curb you hit last week. Or wonder why the heck your 2021 BMW has to be tested.

It's a bit silly for most Arizonans. According to a 2023 report, 10% of Arizona vehicles accounted for 78% of measured carbon monoxide emissions and 70% of nitric oxide emissions.

So can we somehow liberate Arizonans from this periodic ugh-inducing ritual?

Witness Colorado.

Colorado uses roadside sensors to measure exhaust as cars drive by on normal roads. Drivers don't have to visit an emissions-testing site; they don't wait in line; they don't even have to get out of the car. In 2025, more than 227,000 Coloradans used this option. The state estimates that the technology saves Colorado $18 million every year in driver convenience costs.

The technology Colorado uses isn't particularly fancy or cutting-edge. The state implemented RapidScreen in 2004, and Virginia started offering a similar option called RAPIDPASS over a decade ago.

As it turns out, Arizona has already tried it.

In 2019, state lawmakers authorized a pilot program to test the drive-by approach. After three years of testing, ADEQ issued its report in June 2025. It found remote sensing to be "a reliable emissions technology and a viable alternative to the current testing methods."

We could get about 43 minutes of our lives back on average by skipping a trip to the testing station. Across the pilot's roughly 512,000 vehicle samples, ADEQ estimated that Arizonans could have saved $12.7 million in time and driving costs.

The report calls for further analysis and identifies potential changes to laws. Fair enough. But after seven years, we'd like to politely suggest that lawmakers and ADEQ move this forward. Please.

And that gets us to a broader point: we should celebrate innovation in government.

America is the land of great innovators and entrepreneurs: Bell, Edison, Otis, Ford, Jobs and (dare we say it?) Musk. But innovations come in all shapes and sizes. And sometimes they come from within government. Heck, I was proud during my time in office when, together with the Maricopa County Assessor, we launched a title alert program to help with concerns of deed fraud. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes crows regularly (and he should!) about Ballot Trax ― a statewide mail ballot tracking system. And Gov. Doug Ducey not only facilitated innovation by private sector actors (e.g., autonomous vehicles), but his office regularly delivered inventions like Arizona Business One Stop (2022), Arizona eTitle transfer (2018) and an opioid services locator (2021).

Are any of these on par with the creation of the iPhone or elevator? No. But it's about creating a culture that looks for these opportunities.

And that brings us to a recent joint announcement from Maricopa County and Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Together, they proposed a rule that will turn emissions cuts from cleaner construction equipment into credits that businesses can buy to build or expand.

It's pretty technical, but it's innovative, and the underlying idea is straightforward: find more ways to clean up our air while allowing Arizona to grow. And it's simply the latest in a series of both pro-environment and pro-growth improvements and innovations that have resulted in Arizona's emissions falling 70% since 1990 despite our population more than doubling in the same time.

As is typical, innovation has many fathers (and mothers!). Maricopa County deserves credit. So too does the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, as well as Gov. Katie Hobbs, the EPA and lawmakers from both parties.

But too few elected officials look for opportunities like the one presented by Maricopa County and the EPA. Elected officials are often fine with the status quo. They're more interested in politics than in the mechanics of government administration.

It's a shame.

So when the innovators do come along, we should celebrate them. Perhaps we won't include their names in songs sung by future generations of American schoolchildren ("McCormick's reaper reaped the rye!"). But we can at least occasionally talk about them . And we would love ― love! ― to celebrate the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality in a future column if they can invent us out of the hassle of periodic emissions testing.