A license plate shortage got so bad in September that more than half of Washington counties reported having no plates in stock

Carleen Johnson
The Center Square Washington

If you’ve noticed a lot more vehicles with temporary Washington state license plates in recent months, it’s not your imagination.

A license plate shortage got so bad in September that more than half of Washington counties reported having no plates in stock.

On Tuesday, the Washington State Department of Corrections announced that Correctional Industries, which uses inmate labor to produce license plates, has started to reduce the backlog of orders.

During a same-day work session, Sean Murphy, deputy secretary of the Department of Corrections, told members of the Senate Transportation Committee that its newly built facility is fully operational.

“Five hundred ten thousand license plates are expected to be produced by mid-December,” said Murphy, who told lawmakers the perfect storm of COVID-19, a reduced inmate population, and changes in the pay structure for inmate jobs at the same time they were building a new production facility, all contributed to the massive backlog.

“COVID shut down the world as we know it,” Murphy said.

The license plate-making facility was shuttered in 2020. 

At the time, inmates pivoted to making masks, gowns and hand sanitizer, even as private company producers shipped their supplies out of the country to make a profit.

The Blake decision also played a role.

“In 2021 the State Supreme Court declared simple possession unconstitutional with the Blake decision,” Murphy explained. “At the same time, the Legislature enacted its eighth sentencing alternative in 11 years.”

In other words, according to Murphy, sentencing alternatives for reduced sentences thinned out the inmate population dramatically.

“Both of those changes were wonderful at reducing mass incarceration in our state,” he said, “but it caused unexpected impacts on the system.”

Also, in 2021, lawmakers increased wages for some inmate jobs, but not all, and Murphy said that further reduced the number of inmates who wanted to work in the license plate-making factory.

“That resulted in some of our employed incarcerated individuals moving out of Correctional Industries jobs because you can’t require someone to work in those jobs,” he continued. “We relocated the factory to access a more reliable inmate workforce inside the penitentiary [Walla Walla] and invested $2.5 million in state-of-the-art equipment.”

Douglas County Auditor Thad Duvall told members of the legislative committee the burden created on his office by the license plate shortage can’t be overstated.

“This results in increased labor costs for counties and subagents,” Duvall said. “Probably most importantly, this has eroded public confidence in government’s ability to supply this mandatory service.”

Issuing temporary plates has put extra stress on counties, he noted.

“One subagent in Pierce County so far this year has issued 11,000 virtual plates,” Duvall said. “Can you imagine the daunting task of keeping in touch with those 11,000 people and reissuing temporary plates? this is a daunting task.”

Duvall said getting a specialized or personalized license plate would be even further down the line and voiced frustration that Correctional Industries did not place orders with third-party sub-vendors sooner when they knew they were facing a massive backlog.

He concluded by asking lawmakers to extend the 60-day temporary license plates so that drivers don’t have to keep coming back in to get new temporary plates. He also asked that contracting with third-party plate orders continue until the whole state has at least a three-month supply.

Committee members asked about the use of non-embossed plates now being produced because of the shortage, as those can be made faster. 

“We are temporarily going to flat plates, and as I mentioned, over half the states in the U.S. already do flat plates,” said Beau Perschbacher, legislative and policy director for the state Department of Licensing.

The potential concern discussed is that letters and numbers on the plate not being embossed are harder to see, which could be an issue for law enforcement.

Members also asked those who testified to ensure they communicate with law enforcement so that drivers with expired temporary plates, due to the license plate shortage, are not penalized.

This report was first published by The Center Square Washington.