Blue Angels Florida license plates won't be available for purchase this year - michael towner

Blue Angels fans anxious to adorn their vehicles with Florida's new specialty license plate honoring the Pensacola-based flight demonstration team will have to wait until at least 2020.
Although the Florida Legislature earlier this year approved a bill allowing the plates to be created, it rejected a separate bill authorizing the collection of fees for the plates, explained state Sen. Doug Broxson, R-Gulf Breeze.
"We have a license plate, we just have to get it funded," said Broxson, who pledged to bring funding for the plate back to the Legislature when it meets again in January.
"I don't think it will be a fight, I think everyone is on board," he said.
If approved next year, the plates could be available as early as March, he said.
The specialty Blue Angels plate fee-authorization measure was tied to a larger appropriations bill in the 2019 legislative session.
A recent constitutional amendment mandated that any bill with a fiscal impact receive at least a two-thirds vote for approval, which made it difficult for the larger bill to pass, he said.
"We had a conundrum," said Broxson, who said he didn't have enough time to reintroduce the Blue Angels specialty plate fee-authorization in a separate bill after the larger bill failed.
Kelly Cooke, a spokeswoman for the Escambia County Tax Collector's Office, said the office has already received calls from people who have been disappointed to learn that the plates will not be available this year.
"The plate has not been released by the state so it is not available for us to issue," she said. "We are telling people the soonest it will be available is next year after the Legislature meets."
Plans call for a portion of revenues from the plates to benefit the NAS Pensacola-based National Naval Aviation Museum and its National Flight Academy.
 
Courtesy of Pensacola News Journal:

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