Zero clue how it works where you live (and yes, I saw that this was about California), but in Germany and Austria it's basically at the county level, so every t

Zero clue how it works where you live (and yes, I saw that this was about California), but in Germany and Austria it's basically at the county level, so every time you move more than like 20km, you get a new plate (some amount of leniency for a few months notwithstanding) - for bigger cities there are even different plates for "in the city" and "the actual region around it".