Apr 18, 2016 3 min read

Some problems are in search of solutions.

And then there are solutions in search of problems.

The decision by the commonwealth to do away with the registration stickers that land on the corner of Pennsylvania license plates every year is almost certainly one of the latter.

Sold as a way to modernize the motor-vehicle registration process and save taxpayers a little over $1 million annually, it is putting police departments across the commonwealth in the position of having to get their hands on costly electronic license plate readers that many simply can’t afford.

The economics of this allegedly cost-saving measure were laid out in a story in the Observer-Reporter last week by Mike Jones, the Greene County bureau chief. Each license plate reader, which would be able to tell officers if there is an issue surrounding a vehicle, such as whether its registration is suspended or if it is stolen, costs $18,000. It would then cost an additional $1,500 per year to maintain each one. Given that price tag, it would cost more than $11 million to outfit half – just half – of all 1,300 patrol cars in the fleet of the Pennsylvania State Police with the readers. Right now, the state police are outfitted with just 15 of the readers across the entire state.

For smaller police departments, the cost of putting a reader in every patrol car is simply out of reach. And officers in those departments are concerned that without the quick, easy visual shorthand of an expired registration sticker, they will be unable to pull over drivers and find that they have committed other, much less trivial offenses, or are hauling illegal drugs.

Waynesburg’s police chief Rob Toth told the Observer-Reporter, “It’s a tool we use and one we use daily. It’s the first thing we look at (on patrol). Are we going to have to run every plate?”

While the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has argued that the $1 million it saves every year in producing the stickers can be put toward giving grants to police departments to purchase the license-plate readers, but $1 million won’t come close to meeting the need. In the meantime, if the stickers go away, police will lose this crime-fighting tool.

Some lawmakers are trying to see that this doesn’t happen. The provision that the stickers be nixed was included in the 2013 transportation bill that increased gasoline taxes to help pay for much-needed repairs to the commonwealth’s roads.

State Rep. Dom Costa of Pittsburgh pushed a measure through the House that would restore the stickers and it is pending in the state Senate. PennDOT opposes it, however, saying it trips up their efforts to modernize vehicle registration.

What they leave unanswered, however, is why the modernization can’t proceed, and the stickers eliminated only when police can afford the readers?

Brandon Neuman, the state representative from North Strabane Township, summed it up: “Are we really saving money and are we taking tools away from local law enforcement to make sure cars on the road are safe?”

For now, the answers would appear to be no and yes.