There's an Ad Council radio spot that plays in the early AM on a radio station here in Midland, Texas. It features disability advocate Joni Eareckson Tada telling about how great the newly designed handicapped parking signs are that are about to go up in the state of New York. The new wheelchair image will be more action oriented instead of the old stick figure on the old signs.
That's the old one on the left, new one on the right. Source: Cuomo signs law approving new handicapped signs where Cuomo is quoted from a press release, as follows:
“This bill is an important step toward correcting society’s understanding of accessibility and eliminating a stigma for more than one million New Yorkers, and I am proud to sign it into law today.”
If there's a stigma it isn't for the handicap, it's for the parking lot privilege and the ridiculously high fine for the ticket. (In Texas it's $500.)
But the thing that struck me was Ms. Tada's statement that "It will not cost taxpayers a cent." How can that be? Nothing is free. Someone has to pay for it. It could be that the government plans to say that the funds came from fines paid by parkers who got tickets for using the handicap spots without the proper permit. Call it whatever you want, it's still a tax. Chief Justice John Roberts taught us that in his Obamacare ruling.
By the way, that new stick figure? It looks like he's about to get up out of his chair and walk away. The folks who leave posts about abuse of the handicap parking privilege at handicappedfraud.org may be onto something. No one wants to see someone with a handicap placard take the best parking spot then go skipping up to the store door.