Try to say that headline 3 times in a row
Last Thursday, Arizona lawmakers, always looking to create archaic legislation, passed a bill that
would ban bag bans.
State Senator Nancy Barto, the bill’s sponsor and a Republican, said that “excessive regulation on containers creates more work and cost for retailers and other businesses — and leads to higher consumer cost and a drag on economic growth.” She added: “Municipalities acting on their own to implement these mandates run counter to the state’s goal to overcome Arizona’s sluggish job growth and economic stability.”
The only city to carry out any such rule is Bisbee, southeast of Tucson, which banned single-use plastic bags and requires a 5-cent charge per paper bag.
Like the cold-war-communist domino theory, the ban bag ban movement is equally well-thought out. Like many Republicans, Arizona's lawmakers love to talk about state and local autonomy is the shadow of big government. Like many Republicans, this does not apply to laws they want to shove down their constituents' throats.
Three members of the Tempe city council, who have been weighing the benefits of such a bag ban, penned an op-ed in the Arizona Republic yesterday:
SB 1241 would block cities, towns and counties from enacting local ordinances that limit the use of single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam. This bill restricts a city's ability to reduce waste, lower costs and divert materials from our landfills. It undermines local control of waste management, a responsibility that has historically belonged to cities and towns, which pay for these services.
We believe this action is a step backward and stands in sharp contrast to the views of Tempe residents who have long favored sustainable solutions that benefit the environment and the city's bottom line.
They point out that Tempe uses "over 50 million single-use bags a year," with very few of them being properly recycled. This isn't just wasteful and environmentally unsound, they argue, it is also bad economically for Tempe.
Bags that are not recycled end up in the landfill or create litter in our parks, streets and waterways. Cleaning up all that litter creates more work for our maintenance crews and adds costs for taxpayers.
Maybe one of these days the Arizona GOP will listen to their own rhetoric. Maybe?