From 1986-2000, New York license plates were rather iconic in their simplicity. Featuring a white background with a red trim and Lady Liberty in the center, the state license plates screamed New York. In 2000, the state announced plans to shift to the new blue-based license plates with Niagara Falls in one corner and Manhattan’s skyline in the other. Due to both registration enforcement and the desires to represent upstate New York, the license plates had to change.
Now, just eight years after the new plates debuted, it is time once again for New Yorkers to purchase new license plates for the DMV. The new design, shown above, returns New York to its yellow and blue license plates roots, but few are happy with the requirement to spend $25 on new license plates.
According to the DMV, the current license plates were guaranteed for only five years. After half a decade, the license plates, according to state officials, begin to lose their reflectivity and show the effects of wear and tear. Meanwhile, new law enforcement technologies have come into play that rely on shiny license plates. “License plates are a fundamental tool of law enforcement that has been enhanced in recent years through a variety of technologies that improve their readability, especially under low light conditions,” State Police Superintendent Harry J. Corbitt said. “The State Police has worked cooperatively with DMV to ensure that the new plates will continue to serve the law enforcement community effectively.”
Or something like that. The real answer is, of course, one of economics. By requiring and charging for new license plates, the state can generate revenue at a time when it has none. In fact, David J. Swarts, Commissioner of Motor Vehicles and Chair of the Governor’s Traffic Safety admitted as much. “The bold colors of the new license plate reflect New York’s force and its resilience,” he said. “These new plates, in the official colors of the State of New York, will help maintain highway safety, reduce the number of unregistered and uninsured vehicles on our roads, and generate $129 million in General Fund revenue over two years, which will help address the State’s financial crisis.”
As numerous New Yorkers have been speaking out against the new license plates over the last two days, we turn then to this plan’s relationship to the MTA. On its surface, the state’s need to fill its General Fund coffers has nothing to do with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Yet, the funding plan should.
When the state levied payroll taxes and automobile registration fees on MTA counties, it did so because the MTA needed money and these counties benefit from a healthy mass transit network. Politicians and small business owners complained, and in fact, efforts to repeal the taxes are ongoing today. However, whether business owners know this or not, these counties stand to lose more economically from reduced transit service. In other words, residents outside of the city enjoy significant externalities due to the presence of public transit options whether they use Metro-North, the LIRR or New York City Transit offerings or not.
With the license plates, the state is making a pure and simple money grab. If the outrage over these new license plates isn’t at least as large as the Putnam and Dutchess County protests against the MTA, then it is not a stretch to say that the residents and politicians from these areas simply do not understand economics of access and the interplay between urban and suburban areas.
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Another point about those reflective plates? Much, much easier to be read by photo enforcement. (States that have photo enforcement all have highly reflective plates.) So on balance, this isn’t a bad deal. And may lead to some of the funding streams for MTA we’d like to see — congestion taxing, bridge tolls, red-light cameras, rabid-bus cameras. Also, I think $25 is pretty standard for a license plate. Certainly around that in every state that I’ve ever lived in — Illinois, Tennessee, California, DC, Virginia. And places like Tennessee change their plates every year it seems. Actually, considering how much it cost to get a Driver License in DC, I’m surprised this isn’t more like the $200 it costs to re-register a car in California. (License plates in California are attached to the VIN, so you don’t get new plates, but you do get new stickers.)
I’m seeing a lot of outrage about this issue, but somehow I’m having trouble getting angry over it. I guess this may have something to do with being a life-long New Yorker who has never owned a car. But making car owners pay a nominal fee to get new plates every few years? That’s a bad thing? I assume you have to pay a fee to get a new plate with a new car or to shift the old plate to a new car, so how is this different? If it is really all about raising revenue, I don’t see that the state is going to net much given the cost of the plates (even with prison labor – do they still make the plates in prisons?), plus shipping them to the DMVs, etc. If it were about making money, I expect the fee would be much higher than $25.
Prison labor. That part costs nothing.
They do get paid something, albeit a tiny amount.
It’s less than $.50 per hour, and it’s one of the higher paying jobs because it requires more skill. I kid you not.
I’m accustomed to living in states where you pay an annual fee for a sticker to put on your old plate. Wouldn’t that accomplish the same increased revenue (perhaps more if you’re paying annually, not every 5 years) without all the environmental waste that comes with handing out new plates to every car in the state?
Drivers need to calm down both on the road and about the fees they have to pay. Everywhere they go, drivers irrevocably pollute the earth and empower nations that fundamentally hate us (Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.) by buying their fuel. The gas tax hasn’t increased in my lifetime, meanwhile everyone pays for roads through taxes even if they do not use them (sure, we all benefit from roads because of shipping). Drivers have it great and they should keep their mouths shut about a $25 fee after a decade of time having passed from their last fee paid for license plates. NY state, additionally, is desperate for money, facing deficits in the tens of billions in the coming years, and needs to get creative about raising revenue.
finally, we get rid of these ugly license plates, and go retro, now I wish I could find the statue of liberty ones and the current ones to hang on my wall.
I do wish they’d put the statue of liberty in the middle though, the little ny state shape looks dumb, it isn’t a powerful symbol like our lady in the harbor.
Whatever the economics, as a child of the 70’s, I love the retro look.
It looks absolutely atrocious and doesn’t represent NY in anyway.
[…] the halcyon days of late last week when Gov. David Paterson announced a new plan to replace every New York license plate while charging $25 a car? At the time, state officials claimed that the reflectivity of our current […]
First off, it’s Dutchess County, not Duchess (don’t know if that was an typo or mistake).
Secondly, I think in terms of pure aesthetics, this license plate is a huge improvement over the current plate which, in my opinion, sucks.