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In the annals of bureaucratic outrages, David Wetzel has been the target of a real mind-bender. Wetzel is a chemist from Decatur, Illinois, who retired from a food-industry job 18 years ago and now, at 80, spends a lot of his time demonstrating the benefits of running cars on used frying oil. He has an ’86 VW Golf diesel that alternately runs on diesel fuel and used vegetable oil. In 2006, he put 15,000 miles on it and got 46 mpg, half of that on vegetable oil that he gets free from a veterans’ post after Friday-night fish fries in Decatur.

So Wetzel’s fuel savings are considerable. And he says the average passerby couldn’t even tell the car is a veggie burner—it switches between the fuels almost automatically, and there are no unsightly fuel lines cluttering up the cabin or oversized oil jugs in the VW’s back seat. In short, it doesn’t look a bit like Doc Brown’s jury-rigged DeLorean in Back to the Future. Wetzel keeps busy showing it at schools and gatherings of renewable-energy types and has driven it great distances—to New Mexico—without a hitch. His first veggie experience was with a VW diesel pickup five years ago, and he’s converted a ’79 Mercedes-Benz diesel—he bought it used for just $2000—and driven it cross-country twice.

In a town the size of Decatur (pop. 85,000), the local press has eagerly covered this man’s resourcefulness and his fat-burning car. So Wetzel has gotten a bit of notoriety.

And that may have encouraged two agents from the Indiana Department of Revenue across the state in Springfield to come knocking at Wetzel’s door early one freezing January morning. The agents flashed badges, one of them passing along a card identifying himself as a “senior agent in the bureau of criminal investigations.” This sent shivers up the law-abiding spines of Wetzel and his wife, Eileen, a retired teaching assistant.

This was the message Wetzel came away with: Since he was producing his own fuel, he would need to get a business license because he was, in fact, a fuel supplier, or maybe he was a fuel receiver, and, oh, yeah, like any new business, he’d need to cough up $2500 for a bond, and don’t forget, he’d need to pay taxes on all that vegetable oil he was using as fuel for his car, just like the tax that drivers pay at the pump, and that was either 19.5 cents per gallon for gas or 21.5 cents for diesel, and, yes, that’s retroactive. Keep in mind it’s a Class 3 felony not to play ball here, and you could go to prison for five years.

So Wetzel, a meticulous sort who keeps detailed records, calculated that he’d used 1134.6 gallons of french-frying oil from 2002 through 2006 and sent off a check to the tax department for $244.24. “That averages out to $4.07 a month,” he told the Decatur Herald-Review.

Then it got sticky. Although Illinois apparently issues business licenses without charge, a bond of $2500 was indeed called for. But then, reading the department’s own business definitions on its Web site, Wetzel found he didn’t qualify to be a fuel supplier because he didn’t operate a plant with at least 30,000 gallons of storage, and neither was he a fuel receiver because he didn’t produce, distribute, or transport fuel in the state. So he withdrew his application. Meanwhile, the tax department sent him a letter saying he “must immediately stop operating as a special fuel supplier and receiver until you receive special fuel supplier and receiver licenses.” Then a spokesman for the tax department insisted to a reporter that Wetzel had to register as a supplier as that’s the only way he can pay motorized fuel taxes. This was followed by the department’s informing Wetzel that he did not need to post bond.

About this time Wetzel went to his elected representatives. “You hear the President saying we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” he told the Decatur newspaper. “You hear the governor saying that.”

State senator Frank Watson, R-Greenville, suggested the state had attempted to intimidate Wetzel—“They could have done it with a more friendly approach, it could have been done on the phone”—and went on to introduce Senate Bill 267, which would allow citizens to store up to 5000 gallons of vegetable oils as fuel without facing licensing and bond fees. Another state politician, Sen. Bob Flider, D-Mount Zion, said Wetzel is “an example of ingenuity. Instead of being whacked on the head, he should be encouraged.”

In the process, TV and radio shows came calling, and Wetzel was on NPR, too. An attorney in Denver offered to defend him without a fee. An Illinois truck driver surfaced to say he got a cease and desist order for driving a veggie semi and had to get a license and post a bond.

Politicians in Illinois saw a populist halo glowing around this bill, and it sailed quickly through committee, then through a 58-to-0 senate vote, and a 115-to-0 vote in the house—all this in record time—and was before the governor on May 23. A veteran reporter described the swift action as “very unusual, especially for a bill that was not lobbied, nor palms greased.”

Although the case provided a few nervous laughs, it also set the stage for other states that have yet to figure out how to deal with veggie burners on the roads. California, usually at the forefront of alternative energy schemes, currently charges an annual fee of $100, plus $75 for each vehicle running on cooking oil.

Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/features/07q3/enemy_of_the_state-feature

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Tags: fuel supplier and receiver, special fuel supplier, special fuel supplier and receiver
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