Last week VT Digger had an interesting story about former Attorney General William Sorrell’s “420” license plate.  The story was more or less a puff piece based on the double entendre of the plate number itself. (If you don’t know what 420 means in popular culture you can read up on it here). More or less untouched by the piece was that Sorrell had license plates reserved, for himself and his three sisters. In addition, Sorrell’s plate sat unused for a number of years because he of course had an even lower plate number while he was in office.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wondered how one acquires a three number plate (101-999). So I did what anyone would do in a similarly situated position and went to look up the statute on point. 23 V.S.A. § 304(c) provides as follows “[t]he Commissioner [of the Department of Motor Vehicles] shall issue registration numbers 101 through 9999, which shall be known as reserved registration numbers….”  What’s interesting about the statutory section is that it actually allows for the low plate numbers to stay within an immediate family, seemingly forever, in that it allows for the interfamilial transfer of the registration numbers.

Still I wondered if anyone could get a three number plate. The statute seemed to allow anyone to apply for such a plate, but I’d never heard of it occurring.  So I filed a public records request.  And I did so in the most transparent way I could think of, on Twitter.  @VTDMV was efficient enough to respond to me in 19 minutes.

Now here’s were things get a little bit strange.  Instead of sending a written response indicating that no such records existed as required by the Public Records Act, 3 V.S.A §318(a)(4), I got a call this morning from the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, Robert Ide. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting or corresponding with Commissioner Ide, but he was very pleasant. He explained to me that there were in fact no records responsive to my request. There were no memorandums, emails, policy or procedure that were covered by my request on the issue of three number plates. Commissioner Ide did however indicate to me that three number plates were NOT disbursed to the general public, rather disbursement of those plates were “the purview of the Governor’s Office.” Commissioner Ide also indicated that he tracked this process as being passed down from one Commissioner to another, but again there was nothing at all in writing that he could provide shedding light on how three numbered plates are disbursed.

It’s an interesting issue. Seemingly the statue allows for three numbered plates to be distributed to anyone. “Tradition” however seems to dictate otherwise. It appears that this issue was almost fully litigated back in 1978 by the Vermont Supreme Court in Lague, Inc. v. State but the plaintiff in that case, who was trying to perfect a claim pursuant to the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, lost standing during the pendency of the appeal, because they were granted a three numbered plate.

So if you were wondering how to get a three number plate, you’ll have to wait a little longer, because for now anyway, tradition holds strong.