Some temp tags aren't so temporary

By Mark Forsythe The Kansas City Post Sales tax. Insurance. Personal property tax. Purchasing a vehicle, even an inexpensive one can lead to a substantial outlay of cash. With our ever climbing sales tax rate in Kansas City, the purchase of a vehicle can mean hundreds of dollars to legally put that vehicle on the road. I personally don't have a problem with paying sales tax. I don't enjoy paying it, but I understand taxation and appreciate its importance to fund our government. The fees generated by personal vehicle purchases are an important part of any municipality's income. Kansas City, like many other metros has a growing segment of people who are choosing to subvert the costs by taking part in an underground economy that funnels hundreds of thousands of dollars away from public coffers on a yearly basis. Counterfeit temporary license tags. We've all seen them taped in the back window of a vehicle. Sometimes they look very professional. Sometimes they consist of an expiration date hand-written in large magic marker. Temporary tags are issued by car dealers or the State for the purpose of legally driving your vehicle until you have time to obtain permanent license plates. Of course if "legally" driving is not on your agenda, and avoiding sales tax, licensing fees and insurance is, there's plenty of places around town willing to sell you sets of very good counterfeit tags that you can use at your leisure. As long as you're not stupid enough to put an expiration date that might arouse suspicion (you can't get a legal tag that expires three years from now) you can drive with impunity. The underground economy of counterfeit tags is massive. There are those who make them. Those who sell them. There are dealerships who use their temp tags to "rent" vehicles to people. The cash rental business provides under the counter income to disreputable businesses while providing a way for people to gain the privilege of operating a motor vehicle on city streets. No paperwork. No insurance. No worries. Just a few bucks and you're on the road for as long as you please. So what's the problem? First and foremost there is the safety issue. When a police officer pulls over a vehicle with counterfeit tags, or sometimes even legitimate temp tags, running the number comes back "Not in the database." I say "sometimes" even though one KC police officer related to me "Every temp tag I have ever run comes back to a dealer and not the owner." Scary stuff. You now have law enforcement officers faced with approaching a vehicle containing occupants about which the officer knows nothing. Not all people who use counterfeit tags are violent criminals, but statistics show that significant amounts of violent criminals use counterfeit temp tags. A distant second in this growing problem is the loss of revenue to city, county and state coffers. While police and public safety are always most important, the amount of lost revenue to government is damaging to us all. Finally there is the issue of navigating streets with uninsured drivers that results in increased insurance rates increasing for all of us. This is of course a state issue. The law governing temp tags (RSMo 301.140) is vague and outdated. It certainly makes no effort to bring vehicle licensing into the 21st century. Perhaps our local legislators will take up this cause and create a more modern system that benefits all of us. It seems to be a matter of priorities. Technology has reached a point where RFIDs keep inventory from leaving a store unnoticed, paper currency has become very difficult to counterfeit because of hidden watermarks, casinos can tell you on any given day exactly how many slot machine tokens they have in circulation and even the doorman at your local watering hole can spot a counterfeit driver's license in a matter of seconds. Why is it in 2007 we're using a vehicle licensing system that consists of cardboard, scotch tape and a magic marker?