The Colorado Department of Motor Vehicle has changed the look of the state license plate, but it doesn’t have the money to provide one for every vehicle on the road yet.

That means only new residents and owners of new vehicles will receive the redesigned plate, which features a white background with green lettering, instead of the other way around. Residents renewing expired tags were also slated to receive the new plate but will not until the state obtains the funding to improve the inventory statewide.

"They can’t afford to buy them from the prisons making them, I guess," speculated Judy Follman, deputy Montezuma County treasurer. "Some people are upset because they expected to get the new plate, but we do not have enough of them in even though we ordered them all."

The county has only received approximately a quarter of the 20,000 to 25,000 plates typically needed for this area, Follman said.

The plate shortage resulted from inadequate budgeting to buy all the needed plates, a problem that has disrupted license-plate operations statewide.

"We were told to do this and put in the order but it has not yet been filled," she said.

In November, the Joint Budget Committee approved an emergency supplemental request for $1.3 million, but at least another $1 million is needed to purchase enough for all vehicles by the 2003 deadline. The Motor Vehicle Department hopes to obtain more funding for the transition in the next legislative session.

In addition to the color-scheme change, the numbers and letters on the new plates will no longer be used to indicate the county location of the vehicle registration. For instance, in Montezuma County plates typically begin with the letters U or X, while in La Plata County is signified by plates beginning with F, among others.