Bill to Study Elimination of License Plate Stickers Heads to Indiana Senate

Rep. Doug Gutwein presents legislation to study the elimination of license plate stickers at the Statehouse on Jan. 28

License plate stickers may soon be a thing of the past, under a bill advanced Tuesday by the Indiana House of Representatives. The bill’s author, Representative Doug Gutwein, says the state spends over $6 million a year to make and send out the decals but only collected $450,000 last year in fines for expired plates.

“When someone is pulled over for a traffic stop, the police run the plate in their computer system,” Gutwein says. “They do not need any actual sticker to tell them whether the license plate is expired. Moving to the electronic system would eliminate these unnecessary decals, spare Hoosiers a step when renewing their registration and save taxpayers millions of dollars.”

House Bill 1347 would require the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles to put together a report by August 1, detailing what steps lawmakers would have to take to move to an electronic system. The bill now goes to the Indiana Senate for further consideration.