Legislators crack down on ... fat license plate frames

It appears that the General Assembly is about to approve House Bill 67. It would expand a state law that says the license plate on your car should be legible, to add this provision:

Any operator of a motor vehicle who covers the State name, year sticker, or month sticker on a registration plate with a license plate frame commits an infraction and shall be fined ....

You know what they're talking about: A frame around your license plate that advertises your alma mater or your outlook on life -- or, more likely, the dealer who sold you the car.

"These things have gotten to be where the whole tag is an advertisement," Sen. Harry Brown of Onslow County said at a July 1 meeting of the Senate Finance Committee, which endorsed the bill.

Sometimes the borders of these frames are so fat that the car dealer's name obscures part of the tag -- namely, the state name embossed in small letters across the bottom. The license number by itself doesn't fully identify a car -- there can be several states that have issued tag number ABC-1234 or whatever.

Have you ever been ticketed because of your license plate frame? What are your thoughts about this legislation? Which car dealers are causing the problem here?

Let me hear from you by e-mail or phone (919-829-4527), and don't forget your daytime contact info.

"Law enforcement asked for this," Rep. Nelson Cole of Rockingham County, the bill sponsor, told the Senate Finance Committee. "They simply can't read those plates."

He held up a frame stamped with an auto dealer's name, skinny enough so that it did not obscure "North Carolina" on the license plate itself -- to show that some frames would not violate his proposed law.

And guess what: You can take the frame off, and your license plate won't fall off your car. That's right. You don't need it, regardless of what the car salesman told you.

If the General Assembly passes this little law, watch out for a lot of unhappy reaction.

Arizona legislators this summer are busily removing the teeth from a similar law they passed last year. Arizona State University alumni screamed that the state was squelching their school spirit.

One legislator was peeved after a cop pulled him over one day to advise him -- not even writing him a ticket -- that his license plate frame illegally obscured the "Arizona" on his plate.

That Arizona legislator, state Rep. Bill Konopnicki, is the sponsor of this year's bill, which passed its first vote by 54 to 0. It would reduce Arizona's penalty for violations, and it would tell cops not to ticket drivers with fat frames unless they had some more compelling justification for stopping the car.