When Helena Perez of Newcastle bought a white Subaru two years ago, her car wasn’t the only thing she wanted to upgrade. She also wanted different license plates to go with it. She thought Colorado’s standard white and green license plates were boring and wanted “something new and fresh.”
For an extra $25 fee she decided to get the state’s reissued black license plates, with white lettering.
“I thought it was retro,” she told CPR News. “I thought it looked really nice, the combination of the black plates with the white vehicle. I really liked that.”
What she hasn’t liked so much is seeing how many other people have had the same idea; the roads these days seem to be full of black plates.
“They look like mine. I like to be unique,” she lamented.
Over the past few years, Colorado has started to reissue a number of historic license plate designs in solid red, blue, or black, as well as green mountains on a white background. The black plates, originally from 1945, have been by far the most popular. According to the most recent figures, there are now roughly 378,000 thousand vehicles with black license plates on Colorado’s roads.
To get them, car owners must pay a $25 upfront fee, plus an annual $25 fee. The money goes to support programs for people with disabilities.
“It's become very popular,” said Benjamin Meyerhoff, the Colorado Disability Funding Coordinator, whose office is housed in the state’s newly created Colorado Disability Opportunity Office.
So popular in fact — bringing in a million dollars each month — that this money could soon be a victim of its own success, as cash-strapped lawmakers look anywhere and everywhere for funds to balance the state budget.
With Colorado facing a more than one billion dollar budget shortfall, lawmakers are weighing whether money collected for specific things, like the plate fees that support disability services, should be redirected to blunt cuts to core areas of the state budget, like education and Medicaid.
A long relationship between special plates and disability services
In 2011 the disability community, tired of hearing over and over that there wasn’t money in the state budget for the things their members needed, came up with the idea to auction off highly desirable personalized license plates. Over the years, offerings have included cannabis-themed plates and the names of pro sports teams.
The returns were modest, to say the least. The program generated only $100,000 over its first decade according to state figures. But bringing back the historic license plates has been a game changer. Coloradans are paying around $12 million a year to put those plates on their cars.
“It's a really great example of sifting through the couch cushions for change and that change adding up to a whole bunch of money. It's pretty extraordinary actually,” said Chris Combs, head of the state’s new Colorado Disability Opportunity Office.
The money helped set up that office, which will coordinate all disability services in the state, as well as funding grants to various organizations. Both the office and the grants are overseen by people with disabilities.
"What's really important in this particular program is that the decisions where the money goes are made by people with disabilities," said Lt. Gov Dianne Primavera, whose office helped set up this license plate program. "They have their finger on the pulse much better than some of the rest of us."
Half of the money goes to help people with disabilities access the full range of benefits they may be eligible for, like Medicaid, Social Security and Supplemental Security Income. The other half goes to innovation grants to improve people’s quality of life.
In that realm, Meyerhoff said, “the sky’s the limit.” Grantees have included a training program to work in food service and an effort to design accessible pinball machines. One nonprofit got help to put in a vibrating dance floor so deaf people could feel the beat and follow the music.
A pot of money too tempting to ignore
While people with disabilities have celebrated the increase in funding, the grant program could become a casualty of this year’s state funding shortfall.
The lawmakers in charge of writing the budget need to find more than a billion dollars to keep state finances in balance, and redirecting the revenue raised by specialty license plates is one of the options they’re looking at.
The fees for Colorado’s 200 or so specialty license plates, which include the historic black, blue and red designs, raise about $30 to $40 million annually. That money is earmarked for specific programs, but it all counts toward the overall cap on how much money the state is allowed to spend each year under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
“That's something that you wouldn't think of as being particularly difficult or problematic for the state's budget, but it is,” said Democratic Rep. Shannon Bird. “It’s impacting what the state could otherwise use to invest in key services.”
So Bird and other members of the Joint Budget Committee are looking to potentially sweep the specialty license plate funds into the general budget, to help blunt how deeply they will have to cut into other programs, like K-12 schools and Medicaid, which make up the largest share of state spending.
“Medicaid is crucial,” said Bird. “They are the most vulnerable people in our communities that without this coverage won't be able to enjoy any quality of life. People need oxygen, they need diabetes medication, they need heart medication. They rely upon Medicaid for all of these things.”
Many people with disabilities also use Medicaid to pay for services like in-home care, so they can live independently, and for medical equipment and wheelchairs. But Meyerhoff thinks the needs met by the current grants are too great to redirect this money.
“These funds deserve to go to folks with disabilities to improve their lives,” he said. “This historically is an underfunded community, and just because the state is having a difficult time funding-wise doesn't mean that these funds should go to the general fund. We need these funds.”
Other advocates seem more resigned to the possibility the money could be redirected. Hillary Jorgensen, one of the heads of the Cross Disability Coalition, said she hopes any redirected funding would still go to programs that help people with disabilities, and that the state would restore the grant funding in future years.
“I think it would be really a misstep to cut the program completely,” she said.
No final decisions have been made yet, and some of it could hinge on the state’s next economic forecast on March 17. That will provide the final numbers the budget committee needs before it can present its proposed spending package to the full legislature.
Adding an extra layer of uncertainty over this whole process is the question of what may happen at the federal level.
“We are also very much aware that there are some things that are beyond our control that will have a big impact on the work we're doing or have the potential to have a big impact on our role,” said Democratic Sen. Judy Amabile of Boulder who sits on the budget committee.
However, the Colorado drivers that CPR News spoke with were unaware of the potential drama surrounding their plates.
Jesse Bennas of Carbondale has a solid red plate on his vehicle, his wife has a solid blue and his father-in-law, the black plates.
“I liked it a lot and it matches my car and I get a lot of compliments on it,” he said. “I'm glad the money's going to good places.”
For Perez, it was her first time learning the extra fee she paid for her black plates helps support the disability community.
“Thank you for letting me know,” she told a reporter. “Because I had no idea that I was contributing to this, but now I feel better about myself honestly.”
She said she’ll no longer feel annoyed when she sees all those black plates on the road.
