NASHVILLE -- Vehicle license plates have always been advertisements for the issuing states -- think "Wild Wonderful West Virginia." The mountains and lake on our current Tennessee plates do that artfully, even if they ignore the less hilly terrain of West Tennessee.
Thanks to the legislature, our next license plates will carry the advertising a bit further: www.tnvacation.com must appear on regular license plates the next time the plates are redesigned. The bill to add the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development's official vacation website was sponsored by a pair of East Tennessee lawmakers, Sen. Steve Southerland, R-Morristown, and Rep. David Hawk, R-Greeneville. Gov. Phil Bredesen signed it into law Friday, but his successor likely gets final approval on the next plate's design. There's no schedule for a new design but a new governor usually does it after a year or two in office.
The legislature amended the bill so that "Tennessee" or its abbreviation must still appear separately on the plate. So if that, plus the website and "Volunteer State" must all appear, it might get as graphically muddled as the "BicenTennial" plates we had in the 1990s if the designers aren't careful. Not to mention how lame it is having the "www" prefix.
At least half a dozen states have state-affiliated websites on their plates. Most have dropped the www as unnecessary. There's Georgia.gov, travelSC.com, myFlorida.com, www.IN.gov, www.Michigan.gov and visitPA.com (which is an improvement over the www.state.pa.us that used to grace Pennsylvania's plates).
We're not normally conspiracy theorists but it may be a plot to get more of us to buy specialty plates, which are excluded from having to carry the domain name. And let's face it: most of us do care whether the license plates that adorn our vehicles are attractive or not. That's why the number of specialty plates has burgeoned.
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