State Robbing Highway Fund To Subsidize "In God We Trust" Plates

AFA'S MICAH CLARK CALLS IT HIS PROUDEST ACCOMPLISHMENT

Bowing to pressure from religious right organizations such as the American Family Association and Advance America, the legislature and Governor Daniels last year approved legislation authored by Rep. Woody Burton (R-Greenwood) designating a new special plate emblazoned with the logo "In God We Trust." What made this plate different than other special license plates, however, was the absence of any special fee to offset the BMV's $3.59 per plate expense for producing the license plates. As AI previously reported, the "In God We Trust" plate is being offered as a standard license plate to BMV customers, along with the state's designated standard license plate. As a consequence, the state has issued nearly 400,000 of them since January. A Fort Wayne area blog, Left In Aboite, notes the cost to the state's highway fund has already approached $1.5 million. Quoting a Terre Haute Tribune-Star article, the blog writes:

Since the new "In God we trust" plates became available Jan. 1, nearly 400,000 have been requested and issued around Indiana, said Greg Cook, communications director for the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. That means more than one in four vehicles eligible for the new plates have received one, Cook said.

A new state law that passed overwhelmingly in the Indiana General Assembly last year called on the BMV to issue the new plates beginning this year and to make them available to passenger vehicles, trucks with a gross weight of 11,000 pounds or less and recreational vehicles.

The law, authored by Rep. Woody Burton, R-Greenwood, also requires that the "In God we trust" plates be offered to Hoosier motorists at no additional charge compared with the standard Indiana plate.

In fact, the BMV is absorbing a cost of $3.69 for each plate ordered, according to a report in the Gary Post-Tribune.

The money needed to cover the cost is coming out of the Indiana Highway Fund, Cook said.

"It's more of an alternative standard plate," Cook said.Nearly $1.5 million dollars later, the BMV appears ready to admit there is nothing special about these new plates, and they aren't treating them any differently than the standard state offering.

How can you have something that you consider an alternative to the standard plate design, and yet still assert with a straight face that you don't treat the two as the same? All reports seem to indicate that the two are offered together, or in some cases, the new plate is being offered first and foremost.

If the trend continues, the state's highway fund could be hit to the tune of $6 million this year alone. That means less money to pay for the state's roads. The BMV is already scheduled to invest $12-$17 million in the issuance of a new regular state license plate next year.

If that isn't enough to anger you, this will be. The American Family Association's Micah Clark boasts at his organization's website that the "In God We Trust" license plate is one of his "proudest accomplishments", and that he was allowed by the BMV to participate in the design of the plate. Clark writes:

It’s hard to believe now that it took several years of legislative battles and overcoming some alleged controversy raised by groups like the Indiana Civil Liberties Union to create the new "In God We Trust" specialty license plate.

The plate is one of my proudest accomplishments over the last fifteen years in the State House as I was fortunate to be a part of the design meetings because of AFA’s strong support for Representative Woody Burton’s license plate legislation year after year. When the design was chosen, the BMV ordered an ambitious 500,000 plates based upon an unexpectedly high number of people who voted on the on-line poll choosing between four possible designs.

It looks like the bureau will have to order more. Just three months after it became available the BMV has reported that around 400,000 national motto plates have already been given to motorists requesting them! The plates are available upon request and do not cost any additional fee. As far as we know, Indiana is the only state with a specialty license plate with our nation’s motto.

There's a bit of irony in the BMV allowing Clark to participate in designing this new license plate. Observant AI readers will recall Clark was one of the most vocal critics of Governor Mitch Daniels' EEO policy for state employees because it prohibited discrimination against persons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Clark mounted an e-mail campaign to the Governor seeking the repeal of the policy. Clark said Daniel's policy "gives special rights to homosexuals and cross-dressers." He also falsely and hatefully asserted that "policies like this could eventually force churches to hire homosexuals and cross-dressers and damage our free speech rights by outlawing people to speak out against sins like homosexuality." The effort angered Daniels, who ousted Clark from his education round table, a post he had been appointed to by Daniels' Democratic predecessors. Don't ask me why a Democratic governor would have appointed Clark to anything, let alone something important as education.

Whatever anger Daniels felt towards Clark and others on the religious right, including his 2004 GOP opponent Eric Miller, it is all in the past. This is further evidence of just how far Daniels has gone to appease the religious right and distance himself from any voices of moderation within the Republican Party on social issues to avoid a primary fight next year when he seeks re-election. Daniels has been noticeably silent as the state's leading businesses spoke out against SJR-7. Interestingly, the Indianapolis Business Journal, which is owned by Daniels' former economic development guru Mickey Mauer, editorialized against SJR-7 in this week's edition. The IBJ also ran another well-argued column, "Wedded to the Economics of Intolerance", against the discriminatory amendment written by Baker & Daniels' partner Ronald Gifford.