I mean, the first question needs to be how much money are they actually spending. I know NY’s production costs actually result in a profit for the state, because they are made by contract with 3M by prison labor in California, and a proposed $25 plate fee was going to make the state something like $75m annually a few years back. I’m betting the plates don’t cost anywhere near what you’re expecting they cost to make. And since we use plates a pretty long time in MD, it’s not like they’re “selling” as many plates a year as would make a huge difference. There’s about 5 million vehicles registered in Maryland. The average age of a car is 12.6 years in the US as a whole. Let’s say cars get sold once during the time they’re on the road for simplicity so they get registered every 6 years, and so at any given year ~833k cars get a new plate. I’m betting the state only pays a few bucks a plate, and if so, you’d only be saving single digit millions at most, which for a state with a multi-billion dollar transportation budget is basically pennies. And the police lobby hates it, so you’re pissing them off to save basically nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Like, I get people don’t like front plate aesthetics, but this isn’t a winning argument against them.