What we learned about Ohio BMV’s 3½-year delay implementing a disabled-veteran plate benefit

MetroAvoid long lines at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles with its new print-on-demand temporary tags. This Ohio BMV in North Olmsted had and hour and half wait in May.John Kuntz, cleveland.comBy Michael Johnson, cleveland.comcleveland.com Express DeskCLEVELAND, Ohio — Ohio lawmakers gave qualifying disabled veterans the right to obtain certain specialty military license plates without specified taxes and fees beginning in October 2019. The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles did not fully provide that benefit until April 30, 2023.Court records show Army veteran Jack Kacin had been alerting the BMV to the problem since June 2021, nearly two years before the agency publicly acknowledged its implementation failure.These are five takeaways from the original article, which examined how the error occurred, who was missed by the initial refund effort and what happens next.1. The benefit went unimplemented for about 3½ yearsA change to Ohio law took effect Oct. 17, 2019, allowing qualifying disabled veterans to select eligible specialty military plates without paying specified state registration fees and taxes and local motor-vehicle taxes.The exemption applied to as many as two vehicles and included veterans with a 100% service-connected disability.But an Ohio appeals court found the benefit remained unavailable until April 30, 2023. The records reviewed for the story do not explain why implementation took so long.2. The BMV knew about Kacin’s complaint well before publicly acknowledging the problemKacin sought the waiver at a Shelby County deputy registrar office in May 2021 but was told only a conventional disabled-veteran plate qualified for the exemption.He began regularly corresponding with the BMV the following month. By May 2022, the agency was telling him it was “working to get the issue resolved.”Kacin filed a class-action lawsuit March 17, 2023. Thirteen days later, the BMV publicly acknowledged that the statutory change had not been implemented and said it had identified nearly 2,000 people it believed had been improperly charged.3. The BMV announced an internal review, but its findings aren’t apparent in public recordsThen-Registrar Charlie Norman said March 30, 2023, that the BMV “deeply regrets this error” and was beginning an internal review to determine why the law had not been implemented on time.A review of publicly available BMV, Ohio Department of Public Safety and court records did not locate a report explaining what that review found.The available records also do not establish when senior BMV officials concluded the law was being applied incorrectly or whether veterans other than Kacin had previously complained.4. The first refund effort could not identify every eligible veteranThe BMV initially searched for specialty military plate buyers who also had received a conventional disabled-veteran plate, which gave the agency evidence that they met the disability requirement.That process produced 4,387 refund transactions totaling $535,885 for more than 3,600 veterans.But veterans who qualified for the exemption and never obtained the conventional plate could be missed. Kacin was among them.5. A proposed settlement could expand refunds to veterans previously missedThe 10th District Court of Appeals ruled in December 2025 that potential class members could be identified through BMV plate-purchase records combined with documentation of their disability status.The parties have since reached a tentative settlement. Qualifying veterans would receive full refunds of eligible registration taxes and fees after submitting documentation showing they had a 100% service-connected disability.The settlement has received preliminary approval but still requires final court approval.Michael Johnson brings nearly four decades of newspaper experience in reporting, editing, newsroom leadership, page design and digital publishing. He has led daily and weekly newsrooms in Pennsylvania,...