Fraud checking could be really quick and easy. A tag/placard is registered to an individual. If that information were easily available to whoever was going to

Fraud checking could be really quick and easy. A tag/placard is registered to an individual. If that information were easily available to whoever was going to enforce this (and maybe it already is quickly accessible, I don't know), they would merely need to type in the tag number and see who it is registered to. That person's state ID or driver's license has a photo attached to it and they could easily see if that person is either the driver or a passenger. If the car is parked in a handicap spot and that person isn't present, they can cite for a violation. So there would not need to be any harassment of people who don't seem disabled. We would continue to assume, as we do today, that the issuance of the tag is valid. We would just be checking that when it is utilized, the person associated with it is actually present. "After that the state only has to authenticate the doctor's note and issue the placard." - maybe it is that simple. Let's assume it is. But when I renew my driver's via postal mail there is literally nothing that needs to be checked or verified. It's one piece of paper that requires no verifying documents and just gets processed. And it still costs something like $24 in my state. And for vehicle registration the process is nearly identical and yet it costs $56 where I live. You're argument in this regard doesn't hold merit because it is entirely inconsistent, unless you also believe the fees for those should be waived because they are disabled. And please spare me the "aggravating inequality" nonsense. All of that is a product of the entitlement mentality that has become far too common. Most people who are disabled receive a government benefit in some form or another. So the idea that a very, very small portion of the money that is already taken from others and given to the disabled be used to give them another benefit is not insane, especially when it's a voluntary application. Guess what, things and services cost money. Asking someone to shell out a pro-rated amount of 50 cents to a dollar a month to have that placard benefit from funds the taxpayers give them is entirely reasonable. Yeah, flat fees do mean more to poorer people. But basic consumer protection laws dictate that you are supposed to charge like buyers the same rate. And if the cost of doing whatever costs X, it doesn't magically cost less than X because someone is poor. It still costs X and that money is coming from somewhere. In the end, all you're really arguing for is an additional flat benefit of $25 to be given to anyone who is deemed legally disabled. Whether it gets paid to them first or is absorbed on the back end doesn't mean much, except for perhaps income tax purposes if they received it first so they would have to pay with after tax money (like the rest of us).