CANTON, NY - St. Lawrence County Clerk Patty Ritchie today announced that her petition against Albany’s new license plate mandate has now topped 5,000 names—including more than 2,000 who joined just in the past 24 hours.

Ritchie originally created the petition as a way for St. Lawrence County residents to voice their disapproval of the license plate replacement plan, but her effort is drawing interest from across the state. 

“From Clifton to Cheektowaga, Hauppauge to Heuvelton, and Manlius to Massena, New Yorkers are of one mind in opposing this latest and unnecessary Albany mandate that forces them to dig deeper for something they neither want nor need,” Ritchie said. 

The license plate mandate, passed by just a single vote last spring, will cost St. Lawrence County residents alone more than $2.5 million--$250 million statewide. 

“It’s a tax on families and businesses that hits Upstate hardest, and it comes at the wrong time for families that are already struggling to make ends meet,” she said. 

Ritchie plans to send the petition to the two Northern NY representatives who voted for the plate mandate, Sen. Darrel Aubertine and Assemblywoman Addie Russell, and she singled out St. Lawrence County’s two other state representatives who opposed it.

“Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava and Sen. Joe Griffo knew that this was the wrong idea at the wrong time, and they stood against it. North Country motorists want our other representatives to know that they think it was a bad idea too,” she said.