So I read today that beginning in April 2010 all New Yorkers will be required to purchase new license plates for their cars. Again. We last went through the rigmarole back in 2001 when we transitioned from the 14-year old “Liberty” plate design to the current blue, white and elaborate graphics plates. The cost for the new plates will be $25 on top of your registration fee (which will be increased by 25%) and if you want to keep your current plate number that’ll be an additional $20.00.
The state claims that the reflectivity on the 2001 plates is wearing off and that it is a safety concern. I don’t believe a word of it.
The new plates will bring in $130 million in additional revenue in 2010 alone.
More money for the wainkers in Albany to waste.
I have lived in New York State for 38 of my 41 years on this planet. I have always considered myself to be “Empire State Proud”. I’ll even admit that I got excited when we went from the yellow-on-blue plates to the Liberty plates back in ‘86 and I kind of liked the transition to the current plates back in ‘01 but now is not the time to burden New York State drivers with additional taxes disguised as a fee to address a “safety concern.”
I call bullshit.
This legislation was passed through Albany in the waning hours before the current recess, you know, the one they took after not working for a month, when they did everything but actually work.
Here’s the thing. The downstaters (the five boroughs, surrounding counties and Long Island) always scream that they’re supporting the upstaters and the upstaters are always saying the opposite. This is clearly a case where the upstaters are hit harder with fees because there are many people in the City of New York THAT DON’T HAVE CARS. If there was some sort of guarantee that ALL the money generated from ALL upstate fees collected on the new plates were going to remain for upstate purposes than I think I would be somewhat slightly less incensed than I currently am about this whole thing. But that’s not going to happen. We know it won’t happen, instead it’ll be wasted on some study or salary or other ridiculous attempt to nanny the citizens of New York to death.
I have been told that it is impossible to even consider spinning New York (City) and Long Island into it’s own district a la Washington, D.C. If we did that upstate would crumble into oblivion and everything short of a big wide chasm engulfing the whole place would happen. Clue phone: Upstate New York is already crumbling and it’s because industry, services and people are fleeing from the high taxes and ridiculous number of “fees”.
Governor Paterson seems to forget that he was never elected to the post that he currently has (we can thank Eliot Spitzer for that). And I am all but 100% certain that he will not be re-elected in 2010.
I think the whole lot of them need to be voted out, REGARDLESS OF PARTY AFFILIATION, and we need to start from scratch.
