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Date Posted: 05:47:00 07/13/03 Sun
Author: rick
Subject: Why CILs need VANITY TAGS. $500,000

License plates' new cost confuses some


By DUNCAN MANSFIELD
Associated Press

KNOXVILLE — Nobody bothered to tell the group with the most popular specialty license tag in Tennessee before the state raised the price of the plate by 40% — the first increase since 1985.

''We knew nothing about it,'' said Jim Hart, executive director of the Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Not until a member of the group renewed his distinctive purple mountain Smokies tag — one of nearly 24,000 Smokies tags in circulation.

He discovered the extra registration fee, unchanged since the first Smokies plate was issued in 1997, had jumped from $25 to $35. He called the Friends for answers.

''I was astounded,'' Hart recalled. ''Just think about having a member asking you what is going on with your largest fund-raising element, and you have no idea.''
Ultimately, the Friends found out they weren't alone.

''The price for all of our specialty plates has increased,'' state Department of Safety spokeswoman Beth Womack said. ''The Friends of the Smokies are in no way being singled out.''
The General Assembly agreed last spring to raise the price of the nearly 70 specialty license plates in Tennessee benefiting everything from the arts to the Olympics. At the same time, lawmakers authorized 23 new plates, notably one for the NFL Tennessee Titans.

But county clerks didn't begin charging the higher fees until October, and the Department of Safety has yet to update the rates on its Web site.

For that matter, the department took nearly a week to calculate, at the request of The Associated Press, how much money the plates generate. The answer: $6.3 million in 2002 and with the increase an estimated $8.8 million in 2003.

It took several calls, but the Friends finally confirmed it will receive all of the $10 increase. Most groups, because of the way their specialty tag law was drafted, must split their increase with the state highway fund and arts group.
State Sen. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, championed the fee increase, saying that while no specific group wanted more money, all could use it. ''This price had been the same for 18 years. If you go back 18 years, almost everything has increased by, give or take, 40%.''

The Smokies Friends receive $500,000 a year from the specialty plate in Tennessee, and another $100,000 a year from a $30 tag in North Carolina.

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