Missouri bill aims to deter license tag thieves.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ The first time it happened, James Baldwin just chalked it up as bad luck.

Someone steals the registration stickers off your car tags. What can you do?

But when it happened again this year, the 66-year-old Independence, Mo., man got angry. Sure, he'd tried scoring the stickers with a sharp knife to make them harder to remove intact, but that didn't stop thieves.

"This time I was steamed," Baldwin said. "I realized it was an ongoing problem. It's not just the cost of replacing the sticker; it's the inconvenience."

Plus, there's a principle here, he said. People who steal renewal stickers don't have to bother with proving they have insurance, that their vehicles have been inspected or that they have paid their personal property taxes.

So the retired autoworker asked state Rep. Bill Boucher, a Kansas City Democrat, to sponsor a bill in the Missouri General Assembly that would address the problem of sticker theft.

Under the bill, motorists would have the option of getting registration renewal tabs that could be placed on the inside windshield, rather than on the license tag. The tabs would go in the lower driver's side corner of the windshield, and motorists would be given a sticker to place on their license tags saying, "window tab."