The signing of Senate Bill 708 will have a ripple effect across the entire off-road community for years to come. As VP of Government Relations for the Motorcycle Industry Council notes not only are desert racers impacted by this Bill being signed into law, there are 13 “CARB States” that essentially mirror legislation in California. Since we were at MIC HQ for a Board Meeting it seemed like a perfect opportunity to get Mr. Schloegel to take a deeper dive into the ramifications of the Red Sticker replacement program.
So Scott, a big win in the State of California with the return of “red sticker” for desert racers. How does the program work… and what is a red sticker?
Prior to 2022 there was a two-sticker system in California where they had a green sticker for essentially emissions compliant vehicles, and then a red sticker for competition vehicles. The State felt like that system was being abused, and so they ended up taking away the red sticker program. We worked on legislation to allow competition vehicles to still be used on State lands, BLM lands and other public lands here in California. We passed legislation in 2022 where we were successful in getting it through almost unanimously, and that legislation would have established a new sticker permit program through the DMV. But Governor Newsom, at that time, decided that was going to be way too expensive to rejigger all of the DMV systems, so he vetoed the legislation, and we were back at square one.
Coming back to square one, we worked with Senator Brian Jones, who was a sponsor of the previous legislation as well, and looked at Cal Parks instead. Cal Parks currently does issue stickers or permits for out of state vehicles coming in to use the park system. And so we said, “well, let’s just have them then issue this kind of an equivalent of a new red sticker program.” Work that legislation made it through the Assembly, went through the Senate again, with almost unanimous support. Senator Jones was really key on this — he has done a great job! That legislation passed recently, and this time, the Governor signed it into law. We now have a solution to the problem that competition vehicles for the last couple of years have been operating without any real legal authority to do so, because they didn’t have that red sticker. This new sticker program will go into effect, and it will be for model year 2022, and newer competition vehicles.
That’s part of a bigger issue, because a number of states follow California or CARB’s lead in their legislation. By establishing this precedent, it’s going to have a ripple effect.
Absolutely! As you know, for so many pieces of legislation — doesn’t matter if it’s this particular one or others — California ends up leading. There are 13 other states, plus the District of Columbia, that are considered “CARB States,” where they follow the CARB guidelines rather than EPA guidelines. For anything that is remotely emissions related, it’s really important for us to fight those fights here in California and make them as beneficial for motorcycles and powersports as we can, because there are copycat bills like it introduced around the country.
Let’s tie that in specifically to MIC. You recently served as our interim CEO and president, and you’re also our lead on government relations. So you know better than anybody what MIC does for us, but for the layman who doesn’t know all of the things that the association does, what is compelling about MIC that we don’t know?
Whether you care about the cost of your goods, tariffs, shipping, supply chain issues, public lands, access, you name it, there’s a whole host of issues that we work on a daily basis at the MIC Government Relations team. We’ve got a fantastic team — They’re small but mighty. We cover all 50 States, plus the federal government and anything that comes up that impacts the powersports industry. We’re there to advocate on behalf of our manufacturers, aftermarket, dealers and anyone else who’s out there enjoying our products.
