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If you want a specialty license plate supporting pickleball, our state sport, you’re going to have to wait. Same for plates with the theme of Smokey Bear, Nautical Northwest or Mount St. Helens. None of the specialty plate bills proposed this year survived the latest legislative calendar. None survived last year, either.
A recent House Transportation Committee hearing in Olympia revealed a glimpse of the future of specialty license plates and how we might change it.
I watched all three sessions about these plates so you don’t have to. Consider yourselves lucky. The most important and entertaining hearing is below. (The fun starts at about the 34-minute mark.)
On Feb. 5, the House condensed six specialty license plate bills into one — House Bill 2489. The proposed specialty plates depict Smokey Bear; LeMay, America’s Car Museum; Mount St. Helens; Working Forests; Keep Washington Evergreen; and Nautical Northwest.
Smokey Bear even showed up in person (or bear) at the Capitol for photos. Proceeds from the sales and renewals of the Smokey Bear plate would fund wildfire prevention and education efforts. Let me tell you, the agency wants that plate.
House legislative sponsors seemed proud to present their plates. I was engaged and moved by the first hearing on Jan. 17 and laughed along with the legislators when the sponsors were asked trivia questions about their plates. It made me feel good about the pickleball state sport plate, even though it didn’t survive.
However, there is resistance by lawmakers to spend valuable time on this. In the Jan. 17 House hearing, Rep. Andrew Barkis had a hot mic moment when he was heard saying, “We should all have our own personalized plates issued by the state.” That led to loud laughter throughout the chamber and a call to order from Rep. Jake Fey, the transportation chair.
Rep. Liz Berry followed up with a question: “Can you please explain why we have to vote on license plates and why [Department of Licensing] can’t just approve these … it’s obviously some statute, could we change that? We spend a lot of time on this stuff. Would we be allowed to change that in some way?”
The reply was, “That is a choice you could make.”
More laughter.
Then Fey said, “I bet, Rep. Berry, that you’re not alone in this.”
Rep. Ed Orcutt, who spoke on behalf of the Mount St. Helens plate, said this is the sixth year he’s sponsored the plate, and he’d be “more than happy” to see such plates automatically handled by another agency.
One can conclude there is no longer any appetite in the state Legislature to hear and pass license plate bills. Some members think it is a waste of their time. I agree. I would rather stand in the Department of Licensing line from hell than wait for years for a legislative miracle allowing my specialty license plate bill to pass.
It’s not fair to ask the public — people full of a sense of duty to their cause — to meet the complex and expensive requirements of the DOL specialty plate procedure, only to have them watch an indifferent Legislature fumble their bill, a victim of the vagaries of the political process.
I hope the pickleball plate has a chance to bring some cheer to the Senate and House chambers in the future.
If not, I hope that I will be waiting in a long DOL line in 2026 to get the pickleball specialty plate approved.
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