[PaQSO] Vanity Tag Fees Rising To $76

[TwelveVDC at aol.com]

Please allow me preface the rest of this thread by saying I'm not trying to argue any particular point with anyone.

(Emails are poor at carrying inflections the way voices do in person, so please do not misinterpret my feelings here.)

Now that that's out of the way, maybe I'm thinking the big picture prematurely. I don't know for certain that Ham tags are going up too, because the forms on the PENDOT site haven't been modified yet, and outside of the news release, there's little online. (But, let's be real, right? Hi!)

As far as what hams do when called upon, it's usually at the County level that our efforts are utilized, welcomed, and recognized. So maybe a good place to start is to ask our County FEMA, Club Radio Officers and liaisons, RACES Members, etc, to enlist these County Execs to make a phone call on our behalf to their Harrisburg Representatives as thanks for "what we've done lately." Few know better our value, and chances are, these folks know each other by their first names and have their direct phone numbers handy.

What I do know to be certain, is that if we do nothing at all, we will likely be affected. I don't particularly subscribe to the automatic relationship that Amateur Call Tags are the same as Vanity tags, although that may be a perception to non-hams.

A few hundred (?) new annual statewide applicants exempted from the $50 increase won't land the Commonwealth in bankruptcy court. But it would cost a lot more to cover the costs of what we do when called upon. That's the point to make. I'm not suggesting we threaten to ignore those calls, and I'm not saying they should lower these simple fees. Only leave them as they are.

It's not an insurmountable request. State statutes already commonly exempt hams from handheld devices and cellphone laws, and radios capable of receiving law enforcement frequencies. So they DO know who we are.

-Pete / NL7XM