Governor signs bill creating more specialty plates and reduces the maximum allowable specialty license plates from 150 to 135.

Florida’s specialty license plate program is on the road to growth, as a new law signed Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis codifies key changes.

Sen. Aaron Bean’s measure (SB 364) will begin the development process for license plates representing Inter Miami CF, Safe Haven for Newborns, Pap Corps Champions for Cancer Research, Learn to Fly, Florida Swims, Down Syndrome Awareness, Take Stock in Children, and Gopher Tortoise.

The Bean bill was tweaked in the back-and-forth of the legislative process, with the Senate acceding to conditions from the House to close the deal.

The original Bean bill sought 150 specialty plates, but legislation passed by the House allows for 135 plates. Currently, 128 plates are available, and now another 40 tags are in the pre-sale status.

Under the new law, 3,000 pre-sales will be required for all plates, including out-of-state colleges, which had been set at 4,000, which will help Auburn University who now have 666 presale vouchers to be sold, instead of 1,666.

One plate was sacrificed: the Senate wanted an Ethical Ecotourism tag in the bill also. That was removed by the House, which did not consider that legislation in committees.

The bill also resets the 24-month clock on how long organizations have to reach the sales threshold number of 3,000.

Of the 60 recently authorized plates, 36 haven’t met the sales threshold required in order to be printed.

The bill won’t materially impact the bottom line of subsidiary governments, argued a staff analysis of the legislation from February: “According to the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, the bill may have a negative, but insignificant, fiscal impact associated with programming costs. These costs can be absorbed within existing resources.”

As of June, 1, 2020, there were 1,928,972 specialty license plates on the roads in Florida, a record amount. Endless Summer leads the field with 117,765 followed by Helping Sea Turtles survive with 100,900. The new Disney/Make-A-Wish plate has already sold 25,846 since going on sale earlier this year.

Significant changes to the Live the Dream specialty plate were also approved in the new bill signed by the Governor, reducing the distribution to sickle cell disease organizations from 60% to 25%. Chapman Partnership's distribution was reduced from 30% to 22% and 43% is now available to the Dream Foundation for programs, with an additional 5% for administration, promotion and marketing.