No funds to increase gas pump inspections until 2013

DES MOINES – A $32 million ag and natural resources budget includes additional funding for the annual inspection gas pumps as required by state law, but not until 2013.

A State Auditor's report found that the fuel inspection program administered by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship's weights and measures bureau only checked between 60 percent and 75 percent of the Iowa pumps during a four-year period that ended June 30, 2009. State law requires annual inspections of fuel pumps operating in Iowa.

“It's a valid concern,” said Rep. Jack Drake, R-Griswold, floor manager of Senate File 509, the smallest ag and natural resources budget in 23 years, which was approved by the House April 7 56-41.

SF 509 appropriates total of $32 million from the general fund, a decrease of $1.76-million, 5.2 percent, from the current year and $750,000 less than the governor's recommendation for fiscal 2012. The fiscal 2013 general fund level is $33.5 million, an increase of 4.2 percent.

It further appropriates $76.54 million from non-general fund sources in 2012, including $38.8 million of Fish & Game fund; $3.5 million from the Groundwater Protection Fund; and $33 million from the Environment First Fund. For fiscal 2013, it appropriates $78.54 million from those sources, a $2 million increase for the Environment First Fund.

Given the current budget situation, Drake said there are no funds to increase the number of inspections in the budget year beginning July 1.

In the second year of the two-year budget, however, IDALS would get an additional $1.5 million, $1 million of which could be used to hire more inspectors, Drake said.

“It's something we've been wrestling with,” Drake said about funding for inspections. “Whether I'm buying or selling something, I want to know how much it is.”

However, with the negotiated salary increases and recent increase in benefit costs, “it is hard to see how an increase of $1 million for next fiscal year would allow us to add significant department staff, for either weights and measures or any other program area,” Dustin Vande Hoef, IDALS communications director, said.

Pumps pass inspection if they are within a tolerance of 1 cubic inch per gallon plus or minus, according to IDALS. An inspector generally runs five gallons. There at 231 cubic inches in a gallon, so the tolerance is less than 0.5 percent.

Vande Hoef said about 6 percent of pumps fail the inspection.

During fiscal 2009, the bureau employed seven inspectors to inspect more than 35,000 fuel pumps located throughout the state. It completed inspections of only 70 percent of fuel pumps and no inspections of LP and bulk fuel meters. As of June 30, 2010, the bureau was down to five inspectors available to inspect over 36,000 fuel pumps, according to the audit response.