The office of state Rep. Howard Marklein (R–Spring Green) passes on this news from the state Department of Transportation:

1. What is license plate reissuance?
Reissuance is the replacement of a complete series of license plates that have exceeded their life cycle. Once a license plate series has been identified for reissuance, it occurs automatically at renewal, and is done at no cost to the motorist.

2. What license plates will be reissued?
DMV will reissue all sesquicentennial plates and all remaining auto plates that have red letters. Auto plates with black letters are not being replaced at this time. Both plate types will be replaced with a standard, black-letter auto plate of the current “sailing farmer” design. …

6. Why are we doing this?
Both the sesquicentennial and red letter series of plates are beyond their projected life cycles. As license plates age their reflectivity decreases and they fade. Reduced reflectivity means the plate is less visible to other motorists at night and faded license plates become difficult for law enforcement to read.

The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators provides standards for license plate design. AAMVA recommends that license plates be designed with white backgrounds and black letters in order to provide the best contrast and visibility to law enforcement. Red letters are the least desirable as recommended by AAMVA.

This requires some history, which serves as a demonstration of how government and politicians can screw up the simplest things.

Before Wisconsin’s current license plate design, this is how Wisconsin license plates looked:

These are actually the three previous license plate designs. The black-on-yellow plates were replaced by the red-on-white plates, which in turn were replaced by the black-on-yellow plates. The white plates served as Wisconsin’s Bicentennial plates in 1976, instead of other states’ more patriotic designs:

The white places were replaced with the yellow plates, perhaps because police said they liked the visibility of the yellow plates. No one with any sense of aesthetics liked the yellow plates, however, including state Sen. John Plewa (D–Milwaukee), who was quoted in, of all places, the New York Times as saying, ”Ugly and boring license plates should not be accepted as a fact of life.”

The Times further reported about the statewide contest held for a new plate design:

Among the rejected offerings were a design shaped like a milk can and one shaped like a piece of swiss cheese with the slogan ”State of Udder Beauty.”

Governor [Anthony] Earl chose the five finalists, which were published in ballot form in newspapers around the state last month.

The offerings are these:

* ”We Like it Here” in white letters on a red background.

* A blue, green and red design of a sailboat and barn on a white background, with no slogan.

* The slogan ”America’s Dairyland” on white background with red stripe on top and bottom and an outline of the state in upper left corner.

* ”America’s Northern Escape” in white letters on a green background

* ”America’s Dairyland” on white background with red stripe on top and bottom and a design of sailboat and barn.

The sailboat/barn design won to represent, I suppose, agriculture and tourism. (Which demonstrates the pervasive anti-business attitude of this state, since smokestacks to represent manufacturing didn’t get included.) The problem with the first new plates, however …

… was that the blue numbers (upper right) were judged to look like neighboring states’ plates with similar blue numbers, so they were changed a year later to red.

But red was judged to fade too quickly …

… so black replaced red in 2000.

It is interesting to note that, unlike, say, Iowa, the listing of what county the vehicle is registered in doesn’t appear on Wisconsin plates. (I assume that counties get a cut of vehicle registration fees in some states, hence the county listing. Apparently not here.) Unlike in Minnesota, an opportunity to show off the state’s shape in place of a plain, boring dash was wasted here.

The one time that the state actually got it right was when the state rolled out the license plates in honors of the state’s 150th anniversary …

… which (hence the headline) are being retired in favor of the generic miniature farm design because of the same fading-red problem …

… thus throwing away only the best license plate in the history of this design-challenged state.

Are there other license plate choices? Too many to list here, in fact, but that’s not the point. The bucolic scene from a wetland somewhere is fading away to be replaced by the looks-like-any-state-anywhere license plate.