AUSTIN, Texas - Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law Monday that will eventually eliminate the use of paper license plate tags in Texas.

HB 718 overwhelmingly passed in both the House and the Senate. When Rep. Craig Goldman presented the bill in committee, he presented each member with their own doctored fake tag. He says they only took minutes to make.

New changes for dealers and drivers

Under the new law, car dealers will be required to issue metal license plates when they're sold, instead of the current paper one-trip and 30-day temporary permits.

Those will be produced at the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. The plates will cost $10.

The law goes into effect in 2025, giving dealers and the DMV time to make these changes and establish efficient processes.

Dealers will be able to stock up on plates so they will be able to sell vehicles “without an unreasonable disruption of business due to the unavailability of license plates.”

Law enforcement agencies have been sounding the alarm on this issue for years.

"There's light at the end of the tunnel," Sgt. Jose Escribano with the Travis County Constable's Office told us today. "We've only been working on this for about six years. Not that I'm counting."

He teaches officers across Texas how to spot and report fake tags.

Officers tell us their own jobs are more difficult because of fake tags because you don't know who you're approaching when you pull a vehicle over.

Escribano says criminals often use the doctored tags to mask their cars for smuggling drugs and people. He says other people are looking for a cheaper option and don't realize purchasing doctored tags is a crime.

In the fiscal analysis of the bill, the Legislative Budget Board writes, "TxDMV anticipates technology costs including an estimated one-time cost of $15.6 million in fiscal year 2024 to implement an inventory management system, ongoing annual costs of $5.0 million for maintenance of the system, computer equipment acquisition and maintenance costs related to the additional personnel."

For one local family, this fight was personal

Stewart and Tawny Solbrig lost their son Terrin in 2020 after a truck with a fake tag hit and killed him as he was riding his dirt bike.

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"Terrin was the was the nicest kid you'd ever meet," Stewart told us back in April. "He just wanted to have fun, you know, that's what he was doing that day."

He was just 18 years old when he passed away.

"He was a gentle giant," his mother Tawny said.

The family traveled to Austin several times to speak on this bill as it moved through the legislative process.

Today, Tawny says it feels like lawmakers finally listened.

"And not just my family," she said. "But the police officers that have been fighting this for many years, and the other people who have lost loved ones too."

Tawny says it was difficult to feel a sense of closure after the crash. No one has been arrested for hitting her son.

DPS documents show the responding officer was investigated for mishandling the situation.

"Where's the justice?" Tawny asked in April.

Today, she says she was relieved.

"We got him justice somehow."

Moving forward

Tawny says her family's fight will continue, because the new law doesn't take effect until 2025.

"A lot can happen in two years," she said, calling for more training in that time.

Sgt. Escribano says he'll still be traveling across Texas to provide that. In fact, he'll be holding a training in San Antonio later this week.

San Antonio police told us previously that they write about 700 citations each year for paper license plate tags.

Another law passed this session will make altering paper tags an offense of tampering with a government record.

That change starts in September.