Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103240073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Who's the simpleton here?
Not me. Oh, no. Not me. I've told you, warned you, prodded you: Virginia has to have a new license plate, folks, I've written countless times. It's boring, embarrassing and even dangerous.
I've taken the stump. I've read the tag gospel, loudly, from the pulpit.
And you've ridiculed me, ignored me, shoved me into the corner with the militant single-issue crazies who insist on pricking the collective calm.
But Mr. License Plate won't go away. No. He pursues his single-minded agenda with the same zealotry he brought to this campaign a year ago.
Someone must.
West Virginia is contemplating new license plates.
West Virginia! We're not talking Wisconsin, here. West Virginia is, without casting aspersions, not a place that has been noted for its enlightenment.
Corruption? Yes.
Poverty? Sure.
Coal and mountains and depression? Of course.
But not enlightenment.
Now, the West Virginia legislature has sent to that state's governor - his name you may know; I don't - a budget that includes $1.6 million for a changeover of license plates.
There are 1.4 million vehicles registered in the Backward State.
That's about a buck a plate.
Donald Williams, Virginia's motor vehicle commissioner, says Virginia would have to spend $20 million to convert our 5 million tags.
It is unclear why Virginia needs $4 per car; West Virginia needs $1.
Other states that change their tags "have got a lot of money in the bank," Commissioner Williams says.
I've never thought of West Virginia as a state with lots of cash to squander on frivolity.
The bigger concern there is the natural and legal life span of license plates, says Jane Cline, of West Virginia motor vehicle.
They rot and rust and bend, for starters.
And the longer you have a license plate, the greater the chance that criminals will falsify it.
"We've had our same plates since 1977, and that's a bit long," Cline said.
Virginia has had its design since 1973 and no one seems bothered. No one seems to mind that Texas, Nebraska, Maine and Georgia have determined in studies that so many people evade registration fees that periodic license plate changes are an effective way of enforcing motor vehicle laws.
No one seems bothered that, instead of a general re-issue of plates, we're satisfied with insipid additions - colleges, state seals, war decorations, vanity plates and now, coming up later this year, endangered species, adorn Virginia tags.
And the same snoozing design. No slogan. No tourism appeal. No image projection.
No state has gone as long as we have with the same license plate. No state.
Virginia: The state without the energy to change. Virginia: The no-comment state. Virginia: We're not West Virginia, but we're nearby.
Mr. License Plate told you so. Now you stand to fall behind West Virginia. Don't blame me.
by CNB