License plate hold-ups continue, plates being shipped from the east coast

(KIRO 7).

( KIRO 7).



BY CHRIS SULLIVAN.

KIRO Newsradio traffic press reporter.

License plates. COVID-19. The Department of Corrections. 3 odd topics to create, but when the pandemic hit, the production of all plates was interfered with.

I'm uncertain how many of you understand that incarcerated people still make our license plates in Washington. It's an agreement that is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

More Chokepoints: Green River Bridge repair crew required materials, however the store was closed.

" They agreement with us to produce the license plates, whatever from the embossed plates to the digital plates and vanity plates that you see on the road," said Deputy Director of Correctional Industries for the Department of Corrections Todd Cunnington. "We produce all of them for the state.".

A system of almost 3 lots works in the plate factory in Walla Walla.

And as we discussed a lot during the height of the pandemic, Washington's prisons were struck hard by Covid.

" At various times, you would have an outbreak within the center, and that would cause an unit closure," Cunnington said. "Those closures, on average, appeared to take two weeks to in some cases approximately a month, and at that point, it would basically stop our production on the license plates.".

Plate manufacturing fell well behind throughout the pandemic due to the fact that of those frequent closures. There was a hold-up in maintenance and after that there was a scarcity of products that added to the hold-ups.

The Department of Licensing still has a cautioning about the delays on its website, but Cunnington stated they hope to catch up by next month.

" We're about to a place where we are totally overtaken the Department of Licensing, but it has actually taken a while," Cunnington stated.

That's not where the story ends. Since he's looking at nearly six months without getting his plate, a listener named Chase reached out to me. He's about to go back to the DMV to get another momentary plate as he waits.

He was getting a specialized plate, where the problem gets truly noticable. Any unique plate, whether a vanity plate, a Husky plate, or an Orca plate, uses a various device. That machine went down in June.

" We had actually specialists been available in and everybody we might think about to reanimate the devices that we had," Cunnington said. "It would not go, so we've had to contract out to have the sheeting, what the images are put onto, to have actually that produced for us.".

That printing is now being done on the East Coast and being delivered to Walla for application to plates.

There's no reference of those specifics in the DOL warning. That's something Chase wishes the DOL had actually been upfront about, particularly given that the state cashed his look for the plates months back.

The DOL stated supervisors thought it finest to keep the message generic considering that the hold-ups have actually been triggered by multiple issues. A new machine is on the way and ought to be running this summertime.

" We anticipate being completely operational with that equipment by the first quarter of this brand-new fiscal year, right around August or September," Cunnington said.

Till then, drivers ought to continue to expect delays in those specialty plates, however the issue appears near to getting resolved.

Take a look at more of Chris' Chokepoints.

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