Borderland auto dealers raising concerns over new rule banning paper license plates
EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- The Texas Legislature passed House Bill 718 back in 2023 to address concerns related to the "fraudulent use of paper license tags." Now, however, auto dealers in El Paso County say that since the new rule took effect on July 1, 2025, it has created a backlog and an increase in permit transaction times.
"We're expecting the state of Texas to realize the problem that we've encountered already," said Luis Fierro, owner of LGF Motors in El Paso's Lower Valley.
According to Fierro, once a customer buys a vehicle, they submit everything to webDEALER, but they are taking between 24 to 48 days to complete the transaction and that's what's causing the delay and not the auto dealerships.
The County's Tax Assessor-Collector's Office is the one in charge of fulfilling these permits once a purchase is made.
County Assessor Gonzalez says his office needs personnel to fill out a 6,000-application backlog.
Gonzalez also mentioned that in one day, they had 18 trained clerks work on a Saturday, a queue of 5,800 transactions; they worked over 1,700 of them.
"For that one day of collections, I collected $2.2 million for those 1700 transactions; the majority of that money, sales tax money, goes to the state, but it also is money that eventually comes back to us immediately, or a year later," Assessor Gonzalez said.
The County's Tax Collector's Office also conducts inspections where they have found stolen vehicles, recovered stolen vehicles and the commission fee they get during property tax season.
"This is going to be continuous; we not only have the work that we have to do for the dealer community, but we also have a lot of mailing work, you wouldn't believe the drop-off work that we get," said County Assessor Gonzalez. "We also have work that cannot be done in webDEALER that the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles is telling the dealers to walk it in."
ABC-7 reached out to the office of County Chief Administrator Betsy C. Keller for comment; we are still waiting for a response.
