It’s a secret the state of Florida would rather motorists not know.

The temporary tags that dealers affix to newly sold cars and motorcycles are easy to counterfeit, and even the valid versions are hard to trace. So motorists who blow through tollbooths without paying cost state highway authorities more than $250,000 a year.

Now the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles plans to study a new electronic temporary tag that carries the identity of the owner with it and is as easy to track as permanent tags.

The electronic tags make motorists accountable, said Carl Kaiser, a principal in a company named INSTeTAG that developed the version that will be used in a pilot study.

Holding up a cardboard temporary tag, Kaiser told the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority: “There is no actionable information for law enforcement on this. If you run it, you can only find out which dealer it came from.”

The INSTeTAG, he said, “issues a number on command. As soon as it leaves the dealership, law enforcement knows who’s in the car.”

The Legislature was not asked to fund the pilot study, which will be done in five areas of Orange County. Supporters are seeking funds from highway authorities and law enforcement agencies with the pledge that all the money will be repaid with interest when the study is completed.

The Expressway Authority, which says it loses $5,000 to $6,000 a year to motorists driving vehicles with temporary tags, committed $10,000 to the study on the condition that the rest of the $197,000 project is financed elsewhere.

Robert Hartnett, executive director of TEAMFL, the trade organization for state transportation and expressway authorities, says the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority has agreed to kick in $10,000, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority has indicated a willingness to participate and Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise is considering the matter.

The Turnpike Enterprise and the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority together lose $240,000 a year to drivers with temporary tags who don’t pay, Hartnett said.

“The study looks like a good concept,” said Joanne Hurley, a spokeswoman for the Turnpike Enterprise. “This may result in a system that is quicker and easier to track.”

Hurley said temporary tags can be traced but it is time-consuming. Tags are sold in bulk to car dealers statewide, and the state has records of which dealers have which tags.

“We don’t want anyone to think that because they have a temporary tag they can run a toll station with impunity,” she said. “They can’t.”

But matching a tag with a vehicle owner can take up to three weeks, Hartnett said.

“You have to figure out which dealer had the tag, and then the dealer has to go through all those records to see who got it,” he said. “You just can’t go through that every time.”

If the pilot program is completed successfully, the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority will get its $10,000 back plus 20 percent.