MADISON, Wis. — Two bills authored by Senator Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) updating state law regarding vehicle registration were signed into law on Tuesday.
“These bills are the product of bipartisan work on behalf of the people of Wisconsin, from local employers to Gold Star families,” Hutton said. “Thank you to the constituents who approached us with these suggestions and to all my colleagues for helping advance those ideas into law.”
Senate Bill 38, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 50, exempts a Gold Star family member from the personalized license plate fee for a Gold Star specialty license plate.
Gold Star plates in Wisconsin signify that the recipient is the immediate family member of a service member who died in combat. While the plate itself is without charge, many families choose to personalize their Gold Star plates with names, ranks, or units — a deeply personal tribute that currently carries an annual fee of $15.
Act 50 removes that fee, allowing the 456 Wisconsin families with Gold Star plates to honor their loved ones at no additional cost.
“Gold Star families have already made unimaginable sacrifices for our nation. Eliminating this fee is one small way to demonstrate the respect that those families deserve,” Hutton said. “Thank you to the Coleman family for suggesting this bill and for their sacrifices.”
Assembly Bill 346, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 53, expands the state’s fleet license plate program to include heavier trucks and vans. Act 53 builds on the progress made under a 2021 law that offered businesses with large fleets of smaller automobiles a streamlined vehicle registration process, a reform that has benefitted businesses in the 5th Senate District and across the state.
Crafted in cooperation with the Department of Transportation, the new law expands the fleet plate program to other classes of vehicles including medium- and heavy-duty trucks, tractors, and trailers that meet certain size and weight parameters. Currently, owners of fleets of these vehicles must manually affix registration stickers every year to the plates of each vehicle, a significant logistical burden, particularly for rental companies and businesses whose vehicles are dispersed across the state or even nationwide. The new law allows uniform registration of these fleets en masse, eliminating the need for stickers.
“This bipartisan reform is about making government more responsive to the people it serves, and it does what we should be doing all the time as policymakers: identifying good government reforms and expanding them,” Hutton said.
