GLBT license plate might be eliminated

The new Indiana Youth Group license plate, which supports gay, lesbian, queer, transgender and questioning youth in Indiana, might be eliminated after its
unveiling just weeks ago.

Legislation has been proposed in Indiana that would take these plates off the market, along with nine other plates for smaller organizations, said Mary Byrne, executive director for Indiana Youth Group.

“Last Wednesday at the committee meeting, there was an amendment made by the chair that, number one, took away everyone’s license plate that was approved last year,” Byrne said. “Number two, took away any organization’s license plate that didn’t sell 1,000 plates. Then, it set out that from now on, it’s going to be the legislature that votes whether or not an organization can have one.”

Dennis Rosebrough, deputy commissioner for external affairs of the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, said that, as the law stands, 2,000 plates must be sold for more than four years for any specialty plate’s production to continue. This number breaks down to only 500 plates a year, rather than 1,000.

As of Feb. 27, he said, 413 of the Indiana Youth Group plates have been sold.

“Under the current law, we accept applications through March 1 and then, if they are approved, then the license is issued for the following year,” Rosebrough said.

He said the Bureau of Motor Vehicles does not take part in legislative proceedings, including the one that is challenging the Indiana Youth Group plate.

The members of Indiana Youth Group, without question, feel the current amendment is targeting them specifically, Byrne said.

As it reads now, the amendment does not apply to “government or quasi-government, and college or university” plates. It eliminates license plates that did not sell 1,000 plates in 2011, and it states no further production can continue for groups that didn’t meet this amount.

Byrne said this legislation means no new groups that applied will be allowed to have plates this year.

“There are 59 organizations that have specialty license plates,” she said. “So they’re going to drop 22, even though we have a contract that was just signed by everybody in the administration. And the weird part about it is, too, that the benchmark has always been 500. So those 12 organizations that have been dropped because they don’t have 1,000 have no notice whatsoever.”

Byrne said an earlier, more specific bill targeted the Indiana Youth Group because the organization stands for gay rights.

The bill was too narrow, she said, as it clearly targeted them, and therefore did not pass.

She said the new bill makes no attempts to curtail applications in the future, but it’s temporary, only applying to the new plates this year, which is the year Indiana Youth Group became the first organization with a specialty plate to support GLBT people.

“There’s nothing else in the bill that puts any extra requirements or criteria that, in the future, would decrease the number of organizations,” she said.
 
Byrne said the reasoning the state has given for this new amendment is that the plate program is “a burden on the state” and “a hardship for the state police.”

She said both arguments do not make sense.

Rosebrough said specialty plates cost an additional $40, $25 of which goes to the organization and $15 of which goes to the state.

“The state’s making money on us,” Byrne said. “And the other thing that they’re saying is, it’s a hardship for the state police. They’re all unique, no matter what the little symbol on the left is.”

She said police scanners should be able to read any plate without difficulty, making that argument invalid.
 
“There’s no one else who is targeting the Zoo or Special Olympics or the Marine organization to take their plates away,” she said. “It’s just us.”

Byrne said the plates were going to be a source of revenue for the nonprofit group. Although the group can reapply next year, it then takes a year for the plates to go into effect, so they would be without this revenue for two years.

“It’s going to be devastating to our budget, which we’ve already set,” Byrne said. “It came out of nowhere.”