You Paid For It: New License Plates

COLONIE -- Because you won't stop talking about it, we won't stop investigating New York State's plan to force all motorists to pay for new license plates starting in April 2010.

The cost will be 25 dollars, plus an additional 20 dollars if you want to keep your current plate number.

A spokesman for Governor David Paterson says it's a safety issue. The spokesman says the current plates are losing their reflectivity, and can't be read by police cameras that look for plates on cars with expired or suspended licenses.

But is that true?  I decided to find out by going out on traffic patrol with a Colonie Police Officer. Officer Aaron Malinoski was kind enough to show me the Mobile Plate Hunter 900.

Two mounted cameras on the back of his police car take photos of license plates going by in both directions. The photos are fed into a computer in his car and are instantly displayed on the computer screen. I watched as photo after photo popped up on screen with the NYS license plate clearly visible.

Officer Malinoski tells me he has never had a problem reading a NYS plate. I repeatedly asked him about the reflectivity and clarity of the NYS plates and he told me over and over again that he has yet to come across a NYS plate that his cameras haven't been able to read.

Most New York State license plates aren't very old; the oldest were issued in 2001.

A check of some other nearby states reveals that Pennsylvania last issued new plates in 1999, and before that went 22 years without issuing new plates. Connecticut went 23 years before it last reissued plates, Massachusetts has gone more than 20 years without new plates.

The Department of Motor Vehicles has referred all our questions to the NYS Division of Budget; the DOB has not made anyone available for an interview despite our repeated requests.