​The Cape Cod Commission, on behalf of the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners and the Barnstable County Economic Development Council (BCEDC), has awarded more than $136,000.00 in grant funds through the Barnstable County License Plate Grant Program to support COVID-19 Recovery and Resiliency projects. 
The Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners voted unanimously to award the following six grants:
$25,0000.00 to Sustainable Cape Center for Agricultural Preservation and Education to expand access to locally grown and produced foods;
$25,000.00 to Love Live Local for the Cape Cod Resilience Fund to provide economic relief to Cape Cod’s small business community;
$24,802.00 to Cape Cod Community College to develop the curriculum for the Massachusetts Community Health Worker program;
$25,000.00 to the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod to support Cape Cod arts and cultural organizations as they work to recover and reopen;
$11,545.00 to Cape Cod Young Professionals to support workforce retention and development through CCYP’s new Laser-Focused Coaching Program; and,
$25,000.00 to the Lower Cape Community Development Corporation to provide comprehensive business support to Lower-Cape based small businesses.

​The Barnstable County License Plate Grant Program, funded by proceeds from the sale of Cape Cod and Islands specialty license plates, is intended to support regional priorities for economic development and achievement of long-term economic diversity and sustainability. 
The funding was made available to local or regional governmental or nonprofit agencies for projects that support recovery efforts from the COVID-19 pandemic and resiliency to such impacts in the future. Projects proposed were required to address a documented impact of the pandemic and align with and support implementation of the region’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS). 
Eighteen proposals were submitted in response to a Request for Proposals issued in June. The BCEDC recommended six proposals for funding, which were approved by the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners.

The directive came after the pandemic caused tax revenues to plummet in April, May and June and after DeSantis vetoed $1 billion in spending from the 2020-2021 budget.
Getting ready for the possibility of a special legislative session to balance Florida’s budget, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and top House and Senate appropriations staff have called on state agencies to draw up ways to slice 8.5 percent from their current budgets to address “the expected shortfall” as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The direction to look for reductions does not mean such cuts will be made in the fiscal year 2020-2021 budget, which took effect July 1. It was included in annual budget instructions sent to state agencies in mid-July.
But it came after the pandemic caused tax revenues to plummet in April, May and June and after DeSantis vetoed $1 billion in spending from the 2020-2021 budget. DeSantis made the vetoes in hopes of conserving cash and aligning the budget, which lawmakers passed in March as the pandemic was starting to hit, with the economic realities stemming from business shutdowns and job losses.

Despite frequent requests from Democrats, DeSantis and Republican legislative leaders have shown no willingness to hold a special session before the November elections. But with the fiscal year running through June 30, they could be faced with making budget cuts at some point. As part of the Governor's effort to get the economy moving again, he is actively supporting reopening of schools. “Just as the SEALs surmounted obstacles to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, so too would the Martin County School system find a way to provide parents with a meaningful choice of in-person instruction or continued distance learning.” Gov. Ron DeSantis.
While DeSantis vetoed $1 billion, he signed a $92.2 billion budget into law that included high-profile issues such as $500 million to increase teacher pay, $625 million for the Everglades and other water-related projects and $100 million for the Florida Forever conservation program. He also approved 3 percent pay raises for state workers.
When he signed the budget in June, DeSantis said he was convinced “we’ll be able to weather the storm and do it right,” noting that the state had bolstered its reserves and had received money through a federal-stimulus law known as the CARES Act.
But DeSantis said on a radio show Monday that the pandemic will “loom” over every budget and policy debate during the 2021 legislative session, which starts in March.

"We are using intelligently the CARES Act money in a way that I think will keep us whole,” DeSantis said during an appearance on the Preston Scott show on WFLA radio in Tallahassee. “So, as we go into the legislative session, from a budget perspective, I think we’ll probably be OK for this fiscal year. I think the question is, is how robust is the recovery from the coronavirus shutdown? And if it’s robust, that gives us more options. If it’s not, then we may have to make some more tough decisions.”
A panel of economists will meet Friday to revise estimates of state general revenue, which plays a critical role in funding schools, health programs and prisons.
But economists recently said the state finished the 2019-2020 fiscal year on June 30 with $1.88 billion less in revenues than what was previously anticipated.
The declining revenues also come at a time when more Floridians have enrolled in Medicaid. Enrollment in the health-care program for poor, elderly and disabled people is expected to balloon by more than 14 percent during the current fiscal year, with economists predicting an average monthly enrollment of 4.36 million people.

​DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comments about the memo directing agencies to look at possible budget cuts. But Senate spokeswoman Katie Betta called the reduction exercise prudent.
“It is common for (a legislative budget request) instructions to include an exercise evaluating current year cuts during times when there are significant unknown and unpredictable factors impacting the state budget,” Betta said.
Betta added that another “data point will be available later in the week” when the panel of economists update the general revenue estimates.
The July 15 budget memo also requires state agencies to compile recommendations on 10 percent worth of reductions for the 2021-2022 fiscal year, which will start July 1.
The 10 percent reduction is part of a routine budget exercise. The governor’s office and legislative budget officials made “optional” a portion of that exercise that allows agencies to make a priority listing of the programs or services targeted for potential reductions.

Meanwhile, the $5.6 billion projected surplus for California is estimated, at least back in May, to now be a budget deficit of $54.3 billion and with the last months causing even more lock downs and bailouts, this will be a lot more by the time we get to September.

​On Apr. 25, 1901, New York Governor Benjamin Odell Jr. signed into law a bill requiring owners of motor vehicles to register with the state. It also mandated that every automobile or motorcycle bear “the separate initials of the owner’s name placed upon the back thereof in a conspicuous place, the letters forming such initials to be at least three inches in height.” Owners were expected to provide their own identifying letters, and in those early days there were no restrictions on materials, style or color. Some used metal house letters on leather or wood, others painted the letters directly on their vehicles, according to license plate collector and historian Keith Marvin.
Though the new law put an extra burden on drivers, they were left “rejoicing” at news the bill was signed, wrote the New York Tribune. The reason was that, before the law passed, local regulations often differed—which meant that not only were the laws hard to follow, but also that drivers often found themselves losing out to people who got around the old-fashioned way. As the New York Times reported, “automobilists found that in many instances they were not accorded equal rights with the drivers of horses, and the confusion resulting from these various laws led to the need of a uniform standard.”

​It wasn’t a wild idea in 1901 that automobiles were suffering from the lack of official acknowledgement: the New York Tribune later echoed that “one of the objects of the law was to put a stop to the harassing of the owners of automobiles with local regulations,” and the journal Turf, Field and Farm called cars an “unnatural vehicle” in their reporting on the bill. After the licensing and registration law passed, however, local authorities—even if they controlled a highway or street—could not ban cars from using it. The law also imposed a minimum speed limit (8 mph in cities and 15 mph in rural areas) below which local speed limits could not go.
On May 2, the Times reported that 17 people had already applied for licenses and a man named George F. Chamberlain would receive the first one. By September the Tribune reported 715 had applied, and licenses totaled 1,566 by the beginning of April the following year, according to Marvin.
But, as the number of cars and drivers increased, the painted-on-initials system began to fail, for a simple reason: There were just too many people with the same initials. Hence, the modern license-plate.
On May 15, 1903, the state legislature passed a new law requiring the New York Secretary of State to assign each registered owner a number that would be displayed on the back of the vehicle. And that same year—though New York drivers would have to provide their own plates until 1910—Massachusetts became the first to distribute state-issued plates.

California may have to end most restrictions on personalized license plate language that some might find offensive, if a lawsuit filed Tuesday prevails. The libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation lawsuit challenges the state Department of Motor Vehicles' current policy on free speech grounds.
The department denied more than 30,000 of the nearly 250,000 applications submitted in 2018, the last year for which statistics are available, after deciding that the proposed language “may carry connotations offensive to good taste and decency," says the lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco.
“This broad and vague regulation requires four full-time DMV administrators police license plate applications," the lawsuit argues. Those denials “deprive plaintiffs their right to freedom of speech, in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."
Department officials did not immediately respond to telephone and email requests for comment.
The program brings the state more than $60 million each year. The environmental plates challenged in the lawsuit cost $53 initially and $43 annually to renew and are among 14 special interest license plates that help pay for environmental and special programs.
The lawsuit comes months after another federal judge rejected the department's argument that vehicle license plates constitute government statements, ruling that it is unlikely that “viewers perceive the government as speaking through personalized vanity plates.”
In that challenge filed by the same nonprofit legal organization, the department subsequently allowed California soccer fan Jonathan Kotler to honor his favorite team with the vanity plate “COYW.” Kotler supports London-based Fulham, whose fans often chant “Come On You Whites” for their players in white jerseys. “Upon further administrative review, the DMV determined Mr. Kotler's personalized plate request for ‘COYW' should not have been rejected and is expediting the approval to get it to Mr. Kotler as quickly as possible,” Anita Gore, a deputy director with the DMV, wrote in an email on Tuesday. The DMV had previously told Kotler “COYW” has “connotations offensive to good taste and decency.”

​But the department didn't change its underlying policy, which the new lawsuit seeks to end on the grounds that the First Amendment doesn't allow the government to ban speech just because it finds it offensive.
“We probably wouldn't challenge a regulation limited to seven obscene words, but it strains credulity to say that there are over 30,000 messages per year, ranging from sports cheers (COYW) to someone's nickname (OGWOOLF) that need to be banned," foundation attorney Wen Fa said in an email exchange. “As the DMV's regulation underscores, vague bans on ‘offensive' speech inevitably lead to arbitrary results.”
The OGWOOLF plate was sought by the firm's lead plaintiff in the new lawsuit, Army veteran Paul “Chris” Ogilvie of Concord, California. He says it combines the first two letters of his last name with an old nickname. The department rejected the plate for fear people would interpret OG as short for “original gangster,” the lawsuit says. It says he acquired the nickname OG during his military service.
The firm probably has a good point, said Eugene Volokh, who teaches First Amendment law at the the UCLA School of Law.
"When the government sets up a program in which people can engage in their own speech, like a license plate program, it generally has to administer it in a reasonable and viewpoint-neutral way, so it doesn't discriminate based on viewpoint,” he said.
The current policy seems to fall short, he said, “first of all because that's very vague and separately because some of the offensiveness that the DMV seems to be pointing to seems to come from the viewpoint.”
The suit includes plaintiffs with four other examples:
- “DUK N A,” which the lawsuit says is short for Ducati motorcycles and Andrea, the first name of plaintiff Andrea Campanile. The department said it sounds like an obscene phrase.
- “BO11UX,” though the lawsuit says “bullocks” has been used to mean “nonsense” in a national advertising campaign.
- “SLAAYRR,” which it says is a reference to the metal band
- “QUEER,” which it says is a reference to the plaintiff's sexual orientation and his record label, Queer Folks Records, which he adopted in an effort to reclaim what has become a pejorative label.
Even if the state ultimately allows more arguably offensive words on license plates, Volokh said, "it's not such a huge deal. It's not that people will start distrusting the DMV. Anything people can say on a license plate they could say on a bumper sticker.”