[Don]

Frank........excellent

Steve:

Below I included the e-mail from the 4C's member that worked on the Bill, which is effective Oct 1. My understanding, the DMV is in the process of writing the regulations in support of the Oct 1 effective date with no firm date as to when the regulations will be published.

I questioned with the 4C's, the sentence that is in bold , waiting for clarification. Seems that with an effective date of Oct 1, Composites registered in 2009 , until Sept 30, would still have a 2009 make year.......but, that's a guess.

Copy of e-mail:

" Thanks to the efforts of Hughes and Cronin Public Affairs Strategies (the lobbyist retained by the 4C’s), I am happy to inform you that the Governor has signed Public Act 09-187 (Senate Bill 1081) into law on July 8th. The specific wording changes to the state statutes are included in the attached Acrobat (.pdf) file.

The new law should fix the problem that unintentionally arose last year when the maximum $500 assessment was extended from those antique vehicles with early American plates to any antique vehicle (Public Act 08-150). As you are aware, there were significant differences in how the individual town property tax assessors were interpreting last year’s change. Some towns were looking to this as a means to exclude antique vehicles that were modified or not of “historic interest” from the $500 maximum assessment benefit, and to assess those vehicles at a higher value (resulting in the vehicle owners having to pay more taxes).

We believe the revised wording specifically indicating that vehicles with early American plates will not need to provide documentation to the town assessor that their vehicle qualifies for that the maximum $500 assessment will fix this issue. While early American plates are not required to qualify for the maximum $500 assessment, owners of vehicles without those plates may have to provide documentation to their town assessor that their vehicle qualifies for the maximum $500 assessment. (The change to Section 14-20 to allow the DMV to issue early American plates to antique vehicles with modifications aligns the statutes to what has been standard practice at the DMV for years.) The bottom line here is that if your vehicle has early American plates, you should not have a problem in getting the maximum $500 assessment applied to your vehicle.

As of October 1, 2009, Public Act 09-187 requires that a composite vehicle should be registered as the model year the vehicle most closely resembles. For example, if you have a 1965 Cobra Replica and registered it for the first time this year, that vehicle would be registered with the model year 1965, not with a 2009 model year. The main purpose of that change was to resolve issues that came up on the DMV website last year regarding emissions requirements for new composite vehicles. 4C’s members had discussions with the DMV last year, and the DMV suggested this change be the means of resolving this issue. Presumably, since that 1965 Cobra Replica will now be registered as a 1965 vehicle, that vehicle will be exempt from emissions testing "