​The Cape Cod Commission, on behalf of the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners and the Barnstable County Economic Development Council (BCEDC), has awarded more than $136,000 in grant funds through the Barnstable County License Plate Grant Program to support COVID-19 Recovery and Resiliency projects. 
The Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners voted unanimously to award the following six grants:
$25,0000 to Sustainable Cape: Center for Agricultural Preservation and Education to expand access to locally grown and produced foods 
$25,000 to Love Live Local for the Cape Cod Resilience Fund to provide economic relief to Cape Cod’s small business community
$24,802 to Cape Cod Community College to develop the curriculum for the Massachusetts Community Health Worker program
$25,000 to the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod to support Cape Cod arts and cultural organizations as they work to recover and reopen
$11,545 to Cape Cod Young Professionals to support workforce retention and development through CCYP’s new Laser-Focused Coaching Program
$25,000 to the Lower Cape Community Development Corporation to provide comprehensive business support to Lower-Cape based small businesses
The Barnstable County License Plate Grant Program, funded by proceeds from the sale of Cape Cod and Islands specialty license plates, is intended to support regional priorities for economic development and achievement of long-term economic diversity and sustainability. 
The funding was made available to local or regional governmental or nonprofit agencies for projects that support recovery efforts from the COVID-19 pandemic and resiliency to such impacts in the future. Projects proposed were required to address a documented impact of the pandemic and align with and support implementation of the region’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS). 
Eighteen proposals were submitted in response to a Request for Proposals issued in June. The BCEDC recommended six proposals for funding, which were approved by the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners.

​California may have to end most restrictions on personalized license plate language that some might find offensive, if a lawsuit filed Tuesday prevails.
The libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation lawsuit challenges the state Department of Motor Vehicles' current policy on free speech grounds.
The department denied more than 30,000 of the nearly 250,000 applications submitted in 2018, the last year for which statistics are available, after deciding that the proposed language “may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency," says the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco.
“This broad and vague regulation requires four full-time DMV administrators police license plate applications," the lawsuit argues. Those denials “deprive plaintiffs their right to freedom of speech, in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."
Department officials did not immediately respond to telephone and email requests for comment.
The program brings the state more than $60 million each year. The environmental plates challenged in the lawsuit cost $53 initially and $43 annually to renew and are among 14 special interest license plates that help pay for environmental and special programs.
The lawsuit comes months after another federal judge rejected the department's argument that vehicle license plates constitute government statements, ruling that it is unlikely that “viewers perceive the government as speaking through personalized vanity plates.”
In that challenge filed by the same nonprofit legal organization, the department subsequently allowed California soccer fan Jonathan Kotler to honor his favorite team with the vanity plate “COYW.” Kotler supports London-based Fulham, whose fans often chant “Come On You Whites” for their players in white jerseys. “Upon further administrative review, the DMV determined Mr. Kotler's personalized plate request for ‘COYW' should not have been rejected and is expediting the approval to get it to Mr. Kotler as quickly as possible,” Anita Gore, a deputy director with the DMV, wrote in an email on Tuesday. The DMV had previously told Kotler “COYW” has “connotations offensive to good taste and decency.”

​But the department didn't change its underlying policy, which the new lawsuit seeks to end on the grounds that the First Amendment doesn't allow the government to ban speech just because it finds it offensive.
“We probably wouldn't challenge a regulation limited to seven obscene words, but it strains credulity to say that there are over 30,000 messages per year, ranging from sports cheers (COYW) to someone's nickname (OGWOOLF) that need to be banned," foundation attorney Wen Fa said in an email exchange. “As the DMV's regulation underscores, vague bans on ‘offensive' speech inevitably lead to arbitrary results.”
The OGWOOLF plate was sought by the firm's lead plaintiff in the new lawsuit, Army veteran Paul “Chris” Ogilvie of Concord, California. He says it combines the first two letters of his last name with an old nickname. The department rejected the plate for fear people would interpret OG as short for “original gangster,” the lawsuit says. It says he acquired the nickname OG during his military service.
The firm probably has a good point, said Eugene Volokh, who teaches First Amendment law at the the UCLA School of Law.
"When the government sets up a program in which people can engage in their own speech, like a license plate program, it generally has to administer it in a reasonable and viewpoint-neutral way, so it doesn't discriminate based on viewpoint,” he said.
The current policy seems to fall short, he said, “first of all because that's very vague and separately because some of the offensiveness that the DMV seems to be pointing to seems to come from the viewpoint.”

​The suit includes plaintiffs with four other examples:
- “DUK N A,” which the lawsuit says is short for Ducati motorcycles and Andrea, the first name of plaintiff Andrea Campanile. The department said it sounds like an obscene phrase.
- “BO11UX,” though the lawsuit says “bullocks” has been used to mean “nonsense” in a national advertising campaign.
- “SLAAYRR,” which it says is a reference to the metal band
- “QUEER,” which it says is a reference to the plaintiff's sexual orientation and his record label, Queer Folks Records, which he adopted in an effort to reclaim what has become a pejorative label.
Even if the state ultimately allows more arguably offensive words on license plates, Volokh said, "it's not such a huge deal. It's not that people will start distrusting the DMV. Anything people can say on a license plate they could say on a bumper sticker.”

​The Senate has voted 34-0 in favor of Sen. Patti Anne Lodge’s bill to stop approving new specialty license plates after this year unless they’re for state entities, and to phase out existing specialty plates if they don’t meet specified sales targets. “Usually you have to pay to advertise your cause,” Lodge said, saying Idaho has too many specialty plates.
Current Idaho specialty plates range from the Appaloosa and bluebird plates to snow skier plates and whitewater rafting plates. Specialty plates are optional and come with extra fees to cover both the cost of producing them, and donations to the cause in question, from the Idaho Department of Fish & Game to 4-H.

​Sen. Jim Rice, R-Caldwell, spoke out in favor of Lodge’s bill, SB 1349a. “This stops doing new specialty plates,” he said. “That’s something that’s a bit of an annoying thing that we keep adding more of.”
This year, one new specialty license plate already has passed both houses, the “Choose Life” plate, and a “Too Great for Hate” specialty plate, to benefit the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, has passed the Senate and is awaiting a hearing in the House. Lodge's bill now moves to the House.

​Virginia lawmakers have passed legislation that will create a new license plate with the slogan “VB Strong” honoring the victims of a mass shooting in Virginia Beach.
The bill sponsored by Sen. Bill DeSteph has passed unanimously out of both chambers and heads to the governor’s desk for his signature, The Virginian-Pilot reported Wednesday.
The plates won’t be available until 450 people apply for them and pay a $10 fee that goes toward Department of Motor Vehicles operations by Nov. 20.
“It was a horrific tragedy, and we felt like this was just one way that people could help memorialize the event and ensure that people know that the tragic events that occurred that day are not going to be forgotten,” said Scott Humphrey, a legislative aide for DeSteph’s office.
The DMV offers more than 250 specialty license plates.

​The Washington Wine Institute, in partnership with the Washington State Wine Commission, is working with prime sponsor Rep. Kelly Chambers (RPuyallup) and lawmakers in Olympia this session to create a specialty license plate. If approved, revenue from the plate would be donated to the Washington Tourism Alliance (WTA) to support tourism efforts throughout the state.
“It would be thrilling to see a license plate to celebrate our state’s world-class wine industry,” said Steve Warner, President of the Washington State Wine Commission. “WTA is a perfect benefactor considering our 1,000+ wineries are a major tourism driver in the Northwest.”
The Washington wine industry accounts for $8.4B in-state economic impact including 36,500 related jobs and $2.4B in wine revenue. In 2018, an estimated 2.6 million people visited wineries across the state.
The Washington Wine Institute is currently collecting the 3,500 signatures needed for a new specialty plate as part of the approval process. Click here to sign the petition to push the wine plate forward.

​The Endless Summer slogan is used under license from Bruce Brown Films, LLC.

Prior to 1964, the media saw surfers as rebellious thugs, and Hollywood made them out to be a bunch of idiots. Filmmaker Bruce Brown single-handedly changed that with The Endless Summer. It portrayed the wave as a kind of Holy Grail and surfers as knights on a quest. In one stroke, he replaced Hollywood’s buffoonery with the popular mythology that endures today. 

The Endless Summer was Brown’s sixth surfing film in a career that started almost accidentally and proceeded according to the guerrilla template of the times — shoot all winter, edit in the spring, run your ass off all summer showing the damn thing (including doing your own live narration) in school auditoriums and small halls, then pack up for another winter on the road and do it all over again. With The Endless Summer, Brown broke that mold.

​California did not issue temporary license plates for new vehicle purchases until 2019. Prior to 2019, California was unusual among the U.S. states in not requiring any form of temporary license plate. Vehicle dealers were still required to electronically report sales of new vehicles to the DMV, but they were only required to print out a DMV report-of-sale form at the time of sale.
Newly purchased vehicles typically drove around for a month or more with nothing but a dealer's advertisement or logo on a paper plate insert where the license plate would go, and the DMV report-of-sale form was instead taped to the windshield.
This made the new vehicle essentially "untraceable" both by plain visual observation by persons, and by automated means such as license-plate reading systems, red light cameras, and automatic number plate recognition. 

​This led to an epidemic of drivers of newly purchased vehicles cheating tolls on bridges and toll roads where a transponder system is used instead of toll booths, causing the state to lose $15–19 million per year. Because of this, new state legislation was adopted in 2016 requiring temporary license plates in California beginning in 2019. The DMV's reporting system was modified so that dealers could print out the temporary license plates on special paper. The law was inspired by the hit-and-run death of a pedestrian who was struck by a car with dealer paper inserts, and because it had no temporary plates it was impossible to trace the suspect.  
California's previous lack of a temporary plate requirement was jokingly known as the "Steve Jobs loophole" due to the one-time Apple CEO's habit of keeping rolling six-month leases on a series of Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMGs specifically to avoid having to put license plates on the cars.  
California's previous lack of temporary plates was also taken advantage of by criminals, who knew that a car driving with a dealer ad paper insert was both untraceable and did not raise suspicion. 

​As of December 31, 2019, the California Legacy specialty license plate is now on 820,426 California registered vehicles and raised $26,886,737.00 in 2019. This is up from 669,083 in December, 2018.

The Kids plate is the closest by volume, which is now at 104,969, down from 107,721 in 2018 and raised over $3 million in 2019.

The Whale Tail specialty license plate is now at 76,765, down from 79,934 in 2018, and raised $5,086,534 in 2019. The Arts specialty license plate is now at 48,270 (down from 50,485 in 2018) and raised $3,182,981.00 in 2019.

There are 13 California specialty license plates.

​92,000 Iowa Blackout plates have been issued since they were introduced on July 1st of 2019.
That's triple the number of University of Iowa plates, which was previously the most popular specialty plate.
Paul Cornelius with the Iowa Department of Transportation says the agency had no idea the blackout plates would be so wildly popular. "The way that this has grown so fast and been so successful, ya, it's been kind of eye opening and shocking," said Cornelius.
By comparison, there are just over 30,000 University of Iowa specialty plates currently in use. Those plates have been in existence since 1989. There are roughly 19,400 Iowa State University plates in use, which is the third most popular in the state.
The blackout plates are also among the most expensive specialty plates in Iowa. They cost $30.00, and spike to $60.00 if they're personalized. Iowa and Iowa State plates sell for $25.00 and jump to $50.00 if personalized.
Revenue generated from specialized license plates flows into the "road use tax fund", which is used for repairs and infrastructure upgrades.
Cornelius says money from the blackout plates, which generated roughly $4 million in their first six months, will help at a time of need for the fund. "You know how bad the flooding has been this year," Cornelius said. "There's just a lot of repairs that have to have been done from a lot of that stuff. This fund, it's kind of like that's a big pot that it goes to."
Still, 94% of all license plates issued in the state are the standard county plates. $932 million is generated from vehicle registration fees, of which license plates are a small portion.
In six months, the 'Blackout' plate has already raised nearly twice as much as the 2019 top selling plate in Florida, where there are nearly double the amount of registered vehicles.

December 8, 2019 marks the 39th anniversary of the tragic death of John Lennon -- his legacy of peace and love for one’s neighbors lives on. With the blessing of Yoko Ono Lennon, the California Association of Food Banks (CAFB) continue their effort to create the “Imagine No Hunger” license plate which depicts the iconic self-portrait of John Lennon.
 
In remembrance of John Lennon’s life and celebration of his legacy, CAFB is offering FREE “Imagine No Hunger” license plates, available online at https://californiaimagine.com. 
 
“Imagine is a great word to spread around and I was happy to do this because it is helping a very important charity," said Yoko Ono Lennon.
 
The license plate will support the efforts of both the California Association of Food Banks and its member food banks, of which there are 41 throughout the state. An ‘Imagine’ plate is already on sale in Florida. Michael Towner, CEO of Iconic Legacy states: “The ‘Imagine’ license plate in Florida has already raised over $4.2 million for programs to help end hunger in Florida.”
 
Nearly 1 in 8 households face food insecurity in California. For the 4.6 million Californians struggling with food insecurity, hard choices must be made between buying food and meeting such basic needs as housing, medicine, transportation, or childcare. 
 
“Every person driving behind someone with an Imagine license plate will know that person is leading the way to a California absent from hunger,” states Mark Lowry, Director, CAPOC's Orange County Food Bank, and one of the 41 food banks set to benefit from this license plate.
 
This effort is facing a looming deadline of January 4th, 2020, by which time CAFB and its members must complete the 7,500 pre-registrations to push the new plate into production by the DMV.
 
Registrants will need to provide current vehicle registration information including name, address, and current license plate number. The California Department of Social Services has sponsored the application on behalf of CAFB.
 
New streaming statistics reveal for the first time that The Beatles is appealing to a younger audience. The 1960s group has had 1.7 billion Spotify streams this year so far. The age-group streaming the music is not the baby boomers that fueled Beatlemania, but rather, two generations removed, including many teenagers.
  
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About California Association of Food Banks:
CAFB partners with 41 food banks and over 6,000 local agencies. Our mission is to end hunger in California, and our vision is a well-nourished and hunger-free California, where all people have enough food to lead a healthy life. Learn more at: https://www.cafoodbanks.org/
 
More information, and reserve a license plate now at: https://californiaimagine.com/freeplate/
 
Twitter: @hungerCA @CaliforniaDSS @CAFoodBanks
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imaginenohungercalifornia/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imaginenohunger
 
Contact: Lauren Lathan Reid, [email protected] or 415-200-9468

Senator Keith Perry (R-Gainesville/Ocala) has filed SB 860 on 11/12/19 which proposes to restructure the application process for the creation of new specialty plates in Florida. Senator Perry served in the House from 2010 to 2016 and is in his 4th year in the Florida Senate. He was born in Tallahassee and is the founder and CEO of Perry Roofing Contractors.

Currently, in order to create a specialty license p[late in Florida, it requires legislative approval. In fact 28 new plates are attempting to be created during the same session, many of which have failed on numerous occasions in the past 5 years. Senator Perry's bill proposes that the Department of Motor Vehicles would be solely responsible for the creation of a new specialty license plate, with the provision that the new plate must get a minimum of 2,000 voucher sales within 24 months and a maximum cap at 125 specialty plates at any one time. Currently Florida has 122. The bill also provides that current specialty plates will be de-listed if total plates are less than 1,000 current plates (or 2,000 in a later conflicting section of the bill) for 12 months and collegiate plates are not excluded. This could pave the way for 30 new specialty plates.

The full gallery of available Florida specialty license plates can be viewed by clicking here. Florida DMV does not have the facility to order specialty license plates online, however, they can be ordered at MyFloridaSpecialtyPlate.com.

A state legislator in New Mexico wants to also make it easier for organizations looking to create a specialty New Mexico specialty license plate. State Representative Patricio Ruiloba D-Albuquerque, a former police officer, wants to streamline the process for these groups by requiring them to go through the MVD instead of the state legislature. He introduced this proposal last week at a transportation subcommittee meeting. ​Right now, there are more than 40 specialty plates available in New Mexico. Ruiloba says the wide variety is a point of pride for the state.

“It’s welcoming in New Mexico because of our diversity to have different kinds of license plates to express our culture and many of the organizations that support New Mexico and I think we just need to find a better way to accommodate those needs,” Ruiloba said.​ He says there will likely be other license plate-related legislation coming up this session, including more talks of potentially requiring a front license plate.