Will Ohio soon offer a ‘Weirdo Cat Lovers of Cleveland’ license plate?

COLUMBUS, Ohio—A bipartisan group of Ohio lawmakers are again pushing one of their pet issues: getting the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles to issue a “Weirdo Cat Lovers of Cleveland” license plate.

House Bill 586, introduced earlier this month, would allow Ohio motorists to pay an extra $25 to get one of the plates. Of that extra $25, $15 would go to the Weirdo Cat Lovers of Cleveland, a Northeast Ohio nonprofit that traps and neuters feral cats to control their population in the area, as well as helps cat owners pay for food, water, and emergency veterinary care. The other $10 would pay for BMV costs.

Ohio already offers dozens of “specialty license plates,” with logos representing sports franchises, nonprofit organizations, the military, colleges and universities, and others.

Though the Weirdo Cat Lovers of Cleveland has an offbeat name, the work they do to help cats in Northeast Ohio is no joke, said state Rep. Phil Robinson, a Solon Democrat co-sponsoring the bill, in an interview.

Robinson first introduced a license plate bill to help the group last session, after one of his constituents – one of the group’s nearly 19,000 members – approached him with the idea.

“It seemed like a great cause, and they do some really great work,” he said.

It’s not yet clear how much money would be raised for the cat lovers group if his license plate bill passes, though Robinson said it could be a fair amount of scratch. Ohio law requires that before a new organizational license plate is issued, at least 150 people have to sign a petition pledging to purchase one of the new plates; issuing 150 plates would provide a total of $2,250 for the Weirdo Cat Lovers of Cleveland.

“They believe it’s something that could catch on pretty quickly, and every dollar would go to a great cause to help those in need,” Robinson said of the group’s leaders.

Robinson first introduced the Weirdo Cat Lovers of Cleveland license plate bill in 2021, but it failed to pass. This time around, he said, he’s more optimistic the measure will be approved – if not as a standalone bill, then as one of a number of proposed license-plate ideas that are bunched together in a single bill and passed as a group, as lawmakers did with several other proposed license plates toward the end of last session.

Besides Robinson, HB586′s co-sponsors include Republican state Rep. Jim Hoops of Henry County and Democratic state Reps. Sean Brennan of Parma, Darnell Brewer of Cleveland, and Michele Grim of Toledo.

Jeremy Pelzer covers state politics and policy for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.