§463.78. Special prestige license plates; Native Americans; scholarship fund

A. The secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections shall establish prestige license plates for motor vehicles, restricted to passenger cars, pickup trucks, recreational vehicles, and vans, representing the Native American culture which shall have a minimum of one hundred applicants for such plate. The license plate shall be of a color and design selected by the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs, R.S. 46:2301 et seq., and be in compliance with the requirements of R.S. 47:463(A)(3).

B. The prestige license plates shall be issued upon application to any citizen of Louisiana in the same manner as any other motor vehicle license plate and shall be established only after one hundred applications for the plate have been received.

C. The fee for the plate shall be twenty-five dollars which shall be assessed every two years in addition to the standard motor vehicle registration license fee and a handling fee of three dollars and fifty cents which shall be retained by the department to offset a portion of the administrative costs. The donation shall be made as provided in this Section.

D.(1) The department shall collect the additional twenty-five dollar donation and forward it to the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs. The activities of the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs with respect to the donations for the Native American prestige license plate are hereby deemed a public purpose and shall qualify as a cooperative endeavor under the provisions of Article VII, Section 14(C) of the Constitution of Louisiana.

(2) The monies received from the additional twenty-five dollar donation shall be used solely for academic or financial need-based scholarships for students of Native American ancestry.

(3) The Governor's Office of Indian Affairs shall be responsible for the disbursing of the funds and for establishing the scholarship program, including but not limited to adopting rules and regulations relative to academic standards for scholarship recipients.

E. The secretary shall adopt administrative rules to implement the provisions of this Section, including but not limited to rules and regulations governing the collection and disbursement of the donation, the transfer and disposition of such plates, the colors available, and the design criteria.

Acts 1999, No. 1254, §1.