Martin Austermuhle
I keep seeing D.C. license plates with red roses on them. How can I get one?
Easy — just befriend the mayor or a member of the D.C. Council. No, really.
There aren’t many different types of D.C. license plates available — there’s only one specialty plate and 16 organizational plates — so the tag pictured above stands out. Not only does it feature an image of the American Beauty rose, the District’s official flower, but each of the tags bearing the image are also of the low-numbered variety. But getting one of these plates isn’t simply a matter of being first in line at the DMV and paying a hefty fee; you’ve got to be close to someone in power.
Starting in the 1950s, the District’s then-Board of Commissioners began reserving itself the privilege of assigning low-number license plates — 1,000 in all, though that was increased to 1,250 in 1960. With the advent of Home Rule in 1973, the task of assigning the low-numbered plates was split between the mayor and the D.C. Council. For the first 25 years of the program, low-numbered license plates looked exactly like the versions given to us mere peons; it wasn’t until 1985 that the design for the low-numbered tags changed. Since then, low-numbered plates in 1991, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2011 have included distinct images. (The fine folks at DCPlates.com have photographs of all of them.) Last year, it was the wood thrush (the District’s official bird), in 2009 the pink cherry blossom and in 2003 the slogan “One City, One Future.” (Sound familiar?)
Using a Freedom of Information Act request, we were able to get a list from both the mayor’s office and the council of who has these plates. (Only names were offered; linking names to specific tags is against the law.) All told, some 854 lucky residents and businesses have been green-lighted to get low-numbered tags in 2011 — 456 assigned by the council, 408 by the mayor.
Both lists, which are below, include former politicians (former D.C. Council Chair Linda Cropp, former Ward 4 Councilmember Charlene Drew Jarvis, Mayor Sharon Pratt), current council and mayoral staff (B.B. Otero, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services; mayoral spokeswoman Linda Wharton-Boyd; Amy Bellanca, chief pf staff to Councilmember Michael A. Brown), business leaders (D.C. Chamber of Commerce president Barbara Lang), developers (Jim Abdo, Sigal Construction), restaurateurs (Cafe Milano’s Franco Nuschese, Busboys and Poets’ Andy Shallal), media (The Washington Post), religious leaders (Rev. Willie Wilson, Archdiocese of Washington), and philanthropists and high-society types (Judith Terra, Esther Coopersmith). There’s even a few controversial names — Che Brown, the brother of D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown who is the focus of a campaign finance investigation, and Ted Loza, Councilmember Jim Graham’s (D-Ward 1) former chief of staff who was recently sentenced to eight months in prison for his role in a bribery scandal. And in showing what a romantic he can be, Mayor Vince Gray’s onetime maybe-girlfriend Linda Mercado Greene got a tag too.
Low-numbered tags of this variety are certainly a way to recognize important figures and thank political allies and contributors. (Better than giving them all plum city jobs, right?) In the few other states that have them, though, they’ve also served as a political liability — former Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell took some heat earlier this year for giving them out to friends and loyalists at the end of her term. Locally, there are rumors that holders of the tags can escape parking tickets and other moving violations, but nothing we’ve heard backs that claim.
UPDATE, 3:55 p.m. According to a source close to the issue, not all the people on the lists provided to us end up with the tags. It’s up to them to go to the DMV to actually register and receive the tags; some do, some don’t.
Got a burning question about D.C. that you want answered? Email us and we’ll do our best to dig through musty archives, make a load of phone calls and corner reluctant spokespeople. This isn’t Ann Landers or Dan Savage, though — we can’t help with your relationship or fetish.
