Waterford Today

Rep. Matt Maddock (R-Milford) has sponsored a bill that would remove the need for registration stickers on Michigan license plates, saying they are no longer necessary.

Maddock recently appeared on WJR’s "The Frank Beckmann Show" to speak about his legislation and motivation for wanting to get rid of the license plate tabs.

"They were designed for a time when we did not have computers in police cars,” Maddock told Beckmann.

Rep. Matt Maddock | Michigan House Republicans

Now law enforcement can either look up a plate number in their vehicles or call the number in to their dispatch and quickly find out whether the plate is valid, he told Beckmann.

But even more than eliminating something unnecessary is the added work that both citizens and the government have to do in order to maintain the unnecessary system.

"The secretary of state, before COVID, performed about 50,000 different transactions a day,” Maddock told Beckmann. “A vast majority of those transactions are people walking into a secretary of state office, there to pick up a tab, and nothing else.”

With long lines and sometimes long waits just to schedule an office visit online, Maddock said that it is past time to remove such unneeded transactions. The state already allows drivers to provide proof of insurance electronically, Maddock pointed out.

"So this is basically a variation of that,” he told Beckmann. “It’s basically the option to have your -- getting rid of the tabs to do it electronically.”

Both the Michigan State Police and the Michigan Sheriff’s Association have come out in opposition to the measure, Maddock said. Their contention was that the stickers could still help law enforcement to spot an expired plate when the entire computer system is down.

"That was the only opposition, and I really don’t think that’s really strong enough when you look at the windfall of benefits it is to the 7 million drivers here in Michigan,” Maddock told Beckmann.