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In the market for a new license plate? Well there’s no shortage of options. Right now Florida offers 120 specialty plates, but as Whitney Ray tells us, two of them are endangered of being nixed and new measures are in place to make it harder for new tags to be made.

Whether you’re cheering for the Florida Gators, or you actually support Florida gators, there’s a plate for that.

Florida offers drivers 120 specialty license plates ranging from the environment to the arts. There’s a plate for Boy Scouts but no Girl Scout plate. The ladies are good at selling cookies, but couldn’t sell enough tags to stay on the list.

“If you don’t keep up and don’t have a thousand out on the road in a year then you get put on probation,” said Kirsten Olsen-Doolan, a spokesperson with the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles.

One year below a thousand and the plate is nixed. The Hispanic Achievers and the St. Johns River plates both started 2013 on probation.

“It’s hard to get a start up plate going,” said Mark Middlebrook with the St Johns River Alliance. Four hundred plates have been sold. Middlebrook’s confident he’ll reach a thousand.

“The St. Johns River has been kind of over looked as an environmental resource in Florida for many, many years,” said Middlebrook.

Specialty tags cost extra. The additional money goes to support the cause. So far the St Johns plate has raised 10-thousand dollars to protect the river and its tributaries.

We checked in parking lots all over Tallahassee, but the two plates on probation were nowhere to be found but we did find plenty Choose Life plates. Shelia Hopkins with the Florida Catholic Conference says it’s always a top seller.

“It’s been a strong plate in Florida and they have over the years been in the top 10 for plates sold,” said Hopkins.

Frustrated with the growing number of tags, state legislators passed a new law requiring groups to pre-sell a thousand plates before manufacturing begins.

Florida’s specialty plate program began 1987. The first tag commemorated the Challenger explosion. Only three plates have ever been discontinued; the Girl Scouts plate and the Tampa Storm and Orlando Predators Arena football plates. Already this year a bill has been filed to create yet another plate. The Sun, Sea and Smiles tag would benefit the Caribbean Charitable Foundation.

The Department of Children and Families has brokered a deal that will save taxpayers 21 million dollars over the next three years.

DCF is hiring a new company to manage its EBT cards. The cards are loaded with food stamps and cash assistance for needy families. Right now the program costs more than 20 million dollars a year. DCF spokeswoman Erin Gillespie says, after some tough negotiating, the department found a company to do the work for nine million.

“Anywhere we can take an administrative service and reduce that cost means that we can serve more people on the front end who are in need right now,” said Gillespie.

JP Morgan holds the current contract. The new contract is with eFunds. It goes in to effect in July. The transition isn’t expected to impact cardholders.

It looks like holiday sales will fall desperately short of the robust 5.2 percent increase predicted by Florida retailers. According to a MasterCard Advisors Spending Pulse report, sales rose a meager .7 percent nationwide in the two months leading up to Christmas. As Whitney Ray tells us, the sluggish sales will have an impact on the state budget which relies heavily on sales tax dollars to fund the public sector.

After four straight years of slow holiday sales, the Florida Retail Federation foreshadowed a turnaround in 2012.

The federation expected a 5.2 percent increase, but a new report shows a sluggish .7 percent increase in holiday sales nationwide. Florida should do slightly better, but we won’t know for months.

“Holiday sales are an important part of retail, and retail is an important part of the state fiscal picture,” said Rob Weissert, VP of Research at Florida TaxWatch.

Weissert says a slow holiday shopping season will impact the state budget.

“Florida relies heavily on sales tax for funding general revenue and the operations of the government,” said Weissert.

That means everything, from teachers to the people fighting wildfires, depends on you shopping.

About three quarters of every dollar in the state’s general revenue fund comes from sales taxes.

Although the impact of the disappointing holiday shopping season won’t be known here at the state capitol for months, it comes amid a predicted 400 million dollar budget surplus.

“There is a predicted budget surplus, but again those predictions tend to change,” said Weissert.

State economists will meet again before the 2013 legislative session in March and their estimates, including the holiday shopping figures, will have an impact on what lawmakers decide to fund.

Besides the impact the lackluster holiday shopping season will have on the state budget, it could also affect the job market. Many stores use the holiday season to recruit new talent from the seasonal workforce. Sluggish sales will likely mean fewer of those workers will land fulltime jobs.

Online Shopper Tax Evader

Besides the sluggish holiday shopping sales, there’s another humbug feeding on state revenues. Online sales rose 16 percent this holiday shopping season, and most of those shoppers will pay NO state sales taxes. Online shops without locations in Florida aren’t required to collect sales taxes, although the buyers still owe it. Weissert says few shoppers will voluntarily do the math and pay the state.

“They have to go and individually calculate and pay their Florida state sales and use tax, but when they don’t, those collections drop because of tax evasion essentially,” said Weissert.

Last year just 7-thousand people statewide paid the tax. The form is called the DR-15MO. It’s on the Florida Department of Revenue’s Website. We’ve also linked it here on our webpage. http://dor.myflorida.com/dor/forms/2010/dr15mo.pdf