Senate debate on popular black specialty license plate highlights $3.5M windfall and proposal to cap annual charitable proceeds

Senators spent substantial floor time discussing the popularity of Utah’s black specialty license plate and how the proceeds should be treated going forward. The debate centered on a bill sponsor’s proposal to cap the amount that may go to a named charity and to return excess revenue to the state general fund while providing a one-time appropriation to the historical society.

Sponsor Senator Fillmore described the plate as unexpectedly lucrative and said the plate “generated nearly $5,000,000 for the historical society” before the bill’s change, and that the substitute language corrects a fiscal-note error that had briefly shown a much larger fiscal exposure. Fillmore said the substitute “sets a $300,000 cap on the amount of money that can be collected from the specialty plates and then the rest of that goes back into the general fund. So this protects the historical society for the money that they've raised so far with a $3,500,000 donation.”

Several senators…