Actually I think your state is just saying that they will consider the standard routine vaccination to be good for 3 years. Here the 3-year rabies was a different vaccine than the 1-year. Usually only the people with a lot of dogs asked for the 3 year, like people with big packs of hunting dogs. We didn't promote it a whole lot just to be sure the animals got a check-up at least once a year when they came in for vaccination.

I think in some areas you get 2 tags, one for rabies and one for registration with the county. The county tag was only good for one year, I think. It's been quite some time since I had to register anything so I might still be wrong on that (I'm in a different area now)

I can see where less frequent vaccinations will definitely be beneficial for animals sensitive to them. There was a JRT that came in that always got really sick fromt he rabies shot, so we ended up giving him a half-dose and monitoring him the rest of the day. Right now both of my cats have little knots from vaccinations. I'm getting them checked out again when I come back from vacation. They never had any problems before, but they were given their shots before I adopted them.