Right now, the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles issues license plates with more than 40 distinct designs. There are plates with the National Rifle Association’s logo, pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness, various military insignias and the Freemasons’ compass and square. There’s even one specifically for the remaining survivors of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
These plates tend to originate with special interests or nonprofits. They find a sympathetic lawmaker to draft a specialty license plate bill for their cause. Then, that legislator has to run it through a gauntlet of committee hearings, public hearings and floor debates in the House and Senate.
It’s a cumbersome process and, for years, lawmakers across the political spectrum have joked about and criticized that they have to deal with the specialty license plates. It’s a waste of time and resources, they said. But, ironically, they were also unwilling to give up the power.
Some tried, but all failed to pass a law to delegate the responsibility to the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles – that is, until this year.
Introducing ‘the license plate bill to end license plate bills’
Republican Sen. Kelly Merrick of Eagle River is the latest lawmaker to try to let the DMV handle specialty license plate requests without the Legislature’s involvement through her Senate Bill 95.
“Also known as the license plate bill to end license plate bills,” she told the Senate State Affairs Committee at the bill’s first hearing in April of 2023. “It saves money by passing the costs of developing and issuing plates on to the organization, rather than spending state dollars.”
And, she said, it wouldn’t affect existing specialty plates.
“Chair, the Legislature has many significant issues to focus our attention on,” she said. “While the organizations that come to us requesting specialty plates are worthwhile, license plate legislation takes up precious time.”
Over the next 13 months, the bill wound its way through the Senate and the House, picking up riders along the way.
“This was originally the license plate bill to end license plate bills,” she told the House State Affairs Committee this past March. “But after a floor amendment, it is now the license plate bill to end license plate bills except for one license plate.”
In other words, legislators started to use the bill to end specialty license plate bills to create more specialty license plates.
Sen. James Kaufman, an Anchorage Republican, got one in to honor fallen peace officers. And he, himself, had his own version of Merrick’s bill that failed a few years ago.
Then in the House, Eagle River Republican Rep. Jamie Allard got specialty plates added for the United States Space Force, women veterans and retired women veterans.
By May, the legislative session was nearly over and Merrick wasn’t thrilled.
With indignation, she told the House Finance Committee, “After a House State Affairs amendment, it is the license plate bill to end license plate bills except for one more license plate, and another one and another one and another one. … The time has come to stop the madness and pass SB 95.”
Why inconsequential bills persist
Sen. Scott Kawasaki, a Democrat from Fairbanks, vowed back in 2016 to try to end license plate bills every time they come up.
“And every year, it just kept getting more and more frustrating that we would be debating a bill on a license plate rather than focusing on the big picture, the billions of dollars in general fund revenue that are declining or, you know, lots of other things that need our attention a lot more,” he said this week.
Kawasaki, by the way, has a specialty license plate on his own car, one of 60 specifically for state legislators. They’re numbered according to seniority. He has a Senate plate with the number five.
He thinks that bills like Merrick’s have historically failed because lawmakers like having some inconsequential, easy-to-pass bills, especially when they aren’t in the majority caucus.
“I was in the minority for 10 years in the House,” Kawasaki said. “It was hard to pass legislation with my own name on it. And so these sort of lesser bills – naming a day, naming a license plate – sort of became something that minority members could fairly easily pass.”
So what finally changed?
Merrick’s bill finally did pass this session. The vote on the final version was 39-1 in the House. The Senate unanimously concurred with the House changes.
Kawasaki thinks the unusually big class of new legislators who took office in 2023 shook things up. And, he thinks the very last, uncontroversial item having to do with commercial drivers licenses Frankensteined onto Merrick’s bill helped.
That addition removes a barrier for refugees to get a commercial driver’s license in Alaska, related to a bill passed in 2023. The language came from a separate bill the governor requested that didn’t pass.
“So there were a lot of changes that were made in the House side that really just pushed it over the edge,” Kawasaki said.
It’s a little bit of progress and should give lawmakers more time to deal with the state’s bigger issues, he said.
The bipartisan bill to end license plate bills – and do some other stuff – is awaiting Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature. Barring a veto, it will become law at the end of the month.
