How I improved the lives of the citizens of my state
The old situation: Idaho Law required that when someone bought a car, they had to take it, in person, to the DMV for registration to have the VIN inspected...and they of course charged you to walk outside, look at the VIN plate and say "yes, that's what it is." (However, they didn't inspect mine when I registered my new car...there was a huge antimask protest going on in the courthouse parking lot and the employees refused to leave the building, so they took my paperwork's word for it.)
During the pandemic you had to make an appointment to do this, and appointments were scarce. The result was that lots of people were running around on extremely expired temporary tags.
Me being a generally helpful person, and knowing that our state legislators read the newspaper, before the new legislative session kicked off I wrote an editorial saying that it would make life far easier for Idahoans if Idaho dealers were able to use a form on the DMV's website to file for registration and title. We published it and I thought nothing would come of it. After all, making life harder for Idaho's two abortion clinics and further relaxing Idaho's almost-nonexistent gun laws are far more important than saving a third of the state's population from having to spend a day in a DMV office.
Well...a few weeks ago I started noticing something about the temporary tags people are being issued: they don't have an expiration date scrawled across them in Sharpie anymore, they have what looks like a plate number on them. So I got close to a car that has one of them on it and..."plates are on order" is printed on there.
I visited the DMV's website and now on the homepage there's a link Idaho dealers can click to order license plates for customers' cars.
So, yesterday was the Fourth of July Parade. Our managing editor was named Citizen of the Year, so he was in the show. (Today he told me it was a "real strange feeling" being in a parade.) So I'm talking to him about the pictures he'd like me to take, and I just casually mentioned, "hey, you remember that editorial I wrote back in January that said the DMV needs to let dealers register cars online? Well...guess what they're doing now." He got this huge shit-eating grin on his face.
I may not have been the entire reason they made the change, but I like to think I at least had a part in it.
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