Hundreds of people paid for one, so where’s the Great Salt Lake license plate?

This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake.

SALT LAKE CITY — Roy Green shelled out $92 for a pair of Great Salt Lake specialty license plates.

“We thought it would be a good idea to help preserve the Great Salt Lake and the water and knowing it would be going for a good cause,” he said.

But it’s been more than a year and Green hasn’t seen a plate. He also can’t get an update, so he contacted FOX 13 News to help him figure out why. The Utah State Tax Commission said 616 people have signed up and paid for a Great Salt Lake specialty license plate.

“For the last year, we’ve just been getting excuses and there’s been nothing more given to us since January of this year,” Green said. “Other than ‘They’re coming, they’re coming.’ OK, we paid for it.”

It turns out the Great Salt Lake license plate, which raises money for lake preservation efforts, has been swept up into a lot of other legislation on specialty license plates. The bill eliminating the front license plate also created a special committee to review all the license plate designs, as the state adopts new technologies that do away with raised letters and it opens up some license plate real-estate.

“We’ve innovated a lot with license plates right now, we’ve innovated a lot over the past two years. The implementation of that with a lot of the designs is a big part of that as well. The best I can tell you is, we are working on it. Sorry it’s taking so long,” said Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, who sits on the license plate redesign committee.

Sen. McCay told FOX 13 News they are also reviewing license plate laws (there have been bills reacting to First Amendment challenges on personalized plates and deciding where the money from specialty plates goes) and finding some redundant code and looking at ways to save money for taxpayers.

“Some of these things are big and sweeping and trying to get it right is more important than just one particular license plate,” he said Monday.

Sen. McCay said he could only tell people “TBD” when pressed on a timeline for the release of the Great Salt Lake plate. However, he indicated it will be one of the first of the new license plates. 

The sponsor of the GSL plate bill urged people to continue to be patient.

“We are so grateful for the community response to the upcoming GSL license plate. I personally am so excited for this plate to be released and know that many share this excitement,” Sen. Jen Plumb, D-Salt Lake City, told FOX 13 News in a statement. “The delay brought on by the state’s new process is no doubt a bit frustrating, but I am hopeful that we will have these plates on our vehicles soon to share our support for protecting the Lake all across Utah.”

Green said he would like to get a date.

“How long is soon?” he asked.

Related: Why Utah researchers plan to study one of Great Salt Lake’s key residents