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A Sticky Question

By: dmc-admin//March 16, 2009//

A Sticky Question

By: dmc-admin//March 16, 2009//

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The state is considering a little change that could save an estimated half million dollars in its budget during the next two years.

How little a change? About 1 ¾ inches to be exact.

That’s how big the vehicle registration stickers are on the rear license plates of our cars, trucks and vans.

Gov. Jim Doyle has included a provision in his proposed budget that would eliminate the requirement that registered vehicles display those stickers.

Supporters of the proposal note the cost savings. They also point to a problem that has cropped up in cities like Milwaukee where theft of the stickers is a regular occurrence. According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, people stealing vehicle registration stickers accounted for one-quarter of all thefts in the city last year.

Opponents of the sticker change cite the ease with which police and parking checkers can detect crime by identifying stickerless vehicles. Of course, police and parking checkers can easily pull up information about the vehicle’s registration and its driver using the computers in their own vehicles.

What they don’t point out is the money municipalities pull in from folks pulled over for failing to display their tags.

This is actually a bit of a sore spot for me. The very first ticket that I ever received was for driving a car with an expired sticker. (Granted, there were four other tickets in 28 years that followed.)

When I was 16 years old and had been driving less than six months, I was pulled over by a police officer. I looked over at my father, sitting in the passenger seat, and asked what I’d done wrong.

His answer was simple, “Nothing.”

Not according to the officer, who indicated he’d pulled me over for driving with expired license plates.

I remember thinking, “They expire?” It was news to me.

My father explained that I had nothing to do with renewing our car’s license plates, but the officer didn’t seem to care about that. He said it was my responsibility to make sure the vehicle was in proper driving condition each and every time I got into it. Apparently, that included looking at that tiny sticker on the license place before sticking the key in the ignition.

Hmmm…

Needless to say, I would not be sorry to see the stickers disappear.

Look on the bright side, there would be nearly 5,000 fewer thefts in Milwaukee each year.

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