Correct- IL only has emissions in the Chicago and St. Louis metro area. Thankfully, they have changed the system. You used to have to put the sticker on the windshield, and it was a whole separate process of certification and "you will lose your license if you don't" bologna. Now it is tied to your plate renewal- if you don't get the test, you can't buy the sticker. Much easier for everyone to deal with.
On the weird side, they changed the system so that older cars no longer have to do the testing, as long as they pass their final test. I think it's 15 years old or older now. Which seems to go against the point of the whole thing. I gotta think that one 1990 POS will spew far more awful into the air than 10 new cars with a CEL on. But the tests for the OBD-I and older vehicles was expensive- they put the car on a treadmill and ran it through various speeds. Last time I had one of my old Dodges done, I thought the car was going to explode and leap off the rollers. (I think it had some front-end issues...)
Some of the stories of the "certified inspectors" bending people over for $20 marker lamps and whatnot is one of the reasons I suggested that private inspectors would only have the power to "pass" someone, and not to fail them. If a driver wanted to spend money to save time at the DMV, they could buy a certificate. If they didn't, they could wait in line like everyone else. But nobody would be forced to pay a private garage anything, nor would the garages be forced to limit their charges. Any law that forces a private company to limit their prices seems wrong to me, just as wrong as a law that forces people to have to pay a private company. I believe there should be inspections on cars, absolutely. For the same reason we have inspections for airplanes- people die when these machines aren't maintained properly. But I also believe the costs (and the inspection itself) should be part of the renewal process. We're not protecting people from themselves (so-called nanny state) as much as we are protecting everyone else from them.
(Interesting aside- a lot of people love proclaiming that drunk drivers are out there killing people at a furious pace, and are happy to support all kinds of laws against them. You know who the vast majority of people they kill are? Themselves and their adult passengers. Other drivers, pedestrians and children are almost nill- far less than "normal" accidents.)
One of the oddities of IL drivers and vehicle licensing is that the plates cost $79 every year. That's the right to operate that vehicle on the roads. Costs them almost nothing to do- cash your check and print out a sticker. The plates do not get replaced unless they are falling apart.
(And lord help you if you buy a car- $79 for the plates, $65 for the title transfer, and anywhere from $10 to a few hundred in taxes. Or if you need a medium or heavy duty truck- hundreds and hundreds of dollars...)
On the other hand, a drivers license is $30 for five years. A simple state ID is $20. (Until last month, it was $10. It cost more to get an ID than it did to get a license!) But the costs of licensing someone are wayyy higher! Even if it's just a straight renewal, you have to answer all the questions, take the vision test, and they have to make the card. And if you have to take a road test, you use up nearly an hour of their payroll! I was just talking to one of the examiners, and she was telling me she was off work for nearly a year because she got t-boned while out on an examination and had to have surgery... (Meanwhile, if a 16 year old kid passes drivers Ed, they don't have to take a driving test at all. The requirements are higher now, but in 1991, I had only ever driven on the road for three hours and I was a licensed driver. Scary.)
Seems to me it should cost more for the license than the plates, but that's neither here nor there.
