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MARQUETTE - A license proposal that would charge Michigan drivers an optional $10 on license plate renewals could provide a great deal of new funding for Michigan State parks.

Michigan Department of Natural Resources officials are hopeful the proposal will soon pass the state legislature.

"What we've been hearing (is) as soon as they get through the budget, they plan to take it up," said DNR Director Rebecca Humphries. "I don't know if they'll try and run it concurrent or they'll wait until they get through the budget process"

"We're hearing there's pretty good support, so we're hopeful they can run that and we'll get that through," Humphries said.

Humphries said a committee meeting since last year championed the idea.

"It was the Citizens Parks Advisory Committee that really looked at a number of different funding models and they've been really the pushers and movers behind this legislation," Humphries said. "They went out and got the bill sponsors for it and they've been really advocating for this whole Parks Passport System."

The committee said the initiative would ask every Michigan driver to pay an optional $10 fee each year when renewing their Michigan vehicle registration on non-commercial vehicles.

"While non-residents would still have to purchase a non-resident motor vehicle permit, worker time in entrance booths at most parks would be drastically reduced, resulting in cleaner bathrooms, less litter, better resource stewardship, improved security and increased education and interpretation programs," a committee statement said.

"In addition to providing support for state parks and boating access sites, this would also provide funding for our outstanding and underfunded state forest recreation system including more than 140 rustic campgrounds and almost a thousand miles of non-motorized pathways that serve hikers, mountain bikers, cross country skiers and equestrians."

The proposal would approximately double the amount of grant money annually available to local units of government to renovate or improve recreational facilities in local parks across Michigan.

Humphries said the park passport eliminate the annual resident motor vehicle permit for parks, which costs $24.

"It's a recreation passport, instead of having the motor vehicle permit for parks, it would do away with that, put $10 fee on anybody that's renewing a license plate tab if you opt-in. And then our hope is that by reducing that to $10, but getting a much broader sample of hopeful people that wouldn't buy a windshield permit, a motor vehicle permit, but are willing to pay ten bucks on the renewal of their tabs, we can broaden that base out and have a much broader, more robust support of the state park system that way," Humphries said.

Humphries said the $10 fee can't be required.

"You get an option, you can opt-in or opt-out of it," Humphries said.

Humphries said it's hard to predict how well Michigan will do with the program, if it is adopted.

"We think it will be a plus to what we have now, but it's tough for us to determine that because, when we looked at that, we looked at participation in other states," Humphries said. "We do know Montana, the model, they have an opt-out program and I think it's about 70 percent of people stay in it. So we know the opt-out works really well for them."

Humphries said the proposed program for Michigan asks drivers to "opt-in."

"There was another western state that had an opt-in program, they went back and changed it to an opt-out program the next year because they didn't pull in the revenue they needed," Humphries said. "But they still pulled in more revenue than what we would be getting from the (current) motor vehicle permit."

Humphries said the program would also benefit from it being offered through the Secretary of State's office.

She said, "If we broaden it out to this broader base of citizens hopefully we'll at least be able to use the marketing through the Secretary of State where people renew their tags and have access to a much broader public than we currently have using the parks and hopefully can use that to convince more people to participate in this."