Not good
Putting a registration sticker on your license plate was always a tricky task for most Pennsylvanians. Putting the tiny stickers on one small corner of a license plate required the sort of manual dexterity many of us lack.
So, many motorists across the commonwealth were glad to hear that the stickers had been eliminated as of Jan. 1. Motorists will still have to register their cars but they won’t be receiving the stickers in the mail as they had in the past.
On top of eliminating an inconvenience for motorists, the move saved taxpayers $3 million annually in mailing costs. In addition, the move was expected to eliminate a variety of other problems with the stickers, including counterfeiting and fraud.
But, as usual, things never go the way as planned by the Pennsylvania Legislature. When the bill eliminating the stickers was passed in 2013 as part of a major highway construction measure, it was expected that PennDOT would use some of that $3 million saved to buy license plate scanners for state and municipal police departments across the state.
However, nothing of the sort has has happened, according to local law enforcement officials, leaving their departments to fend for themselves. With the license plate scanners going for almost $20,000, there are very few local police departments that will be able to afford even one of the machines, never mind one for each of their police cars.
“They’re fairly expensive,” said Chief Paul Brand of the Carroll Township Police Department, admitting the township can’t afford to install the scanners in his department’s four vehicles.
“My budget is what it is,” said Masontown Police Chief Joe Ryan, noting he couldn’t afford to purchase scanners for the four cars in his department even if the cost was cut in half.
“That can take a bite out of your budget,” said John Hartman, chief of the Southwest Regional Police Department, which covers municipalities in Greene, Fayette, Westmoreland and Washington counties.
The lack of stickers, Hartman noted, will lead to an abundance of calls by police to 911 centers to check and see if a license plate is legal or not. That could cause serious staffing problems at the 911 centers, he added.
Hartman noted that before, a glance at a registration sticker could give an officer a good sense of whether the plate was stolen or whether the vehicle should even be on the road.
“Now, it’s going to be a complete guessing game,” said Lt. Tom Kolencik with the Uniontown Police Department.
Ryan said another problem with the license plate scanners is the lack of cellular service in many parts of the area. He noted that problems with cellular service in the area is a major one and isn’t expected to be fixed anytime soon.
Local police are hopeful that the state will help out with the purchase of the scanners but that seems highly doubtful given the $600 million deficit faced by the state. Even if the state wasn’t facing such a huge deficit, it’s questionable how enough scanners could be purchased for every police car in Pennsylvania. That’s something that members of the state Legislature should have given some serious thought to before passing that highway construction bill in 2013. If funding was going to be a question, the Legislature should have kept the sticker system in place until the scanners had been lowered in price or a funding stream for them had been developed.
As it is now, the lack of stickers and scanners will undoubtedly make driving much more hazardous for Pennsylvania motorists. That’s something that $3 million won’t even begin to cover.