Montgomery County considers plastic-bag ban, doubling tax on paper bags (original) (raw)

Montgomery County is considering a proposed change to its grocery-bag policy that would ban the use of plastic bags at most stores and double the tax on paper bags to 10 cents.

The proposal, presented to residents during a public hearing Tuesday, comes in part after the county’s current policy was poorly implemented, leading to a large amount of uncaptured tax revenue, said Montgomery County Council President Kate Stewart (D-District 4), who sponsored the legislation.

“Our process was not great for the retail establishments, the stores, and we weren’t collecting the money we were supposed to collect,” she said.

That policy, which went into effect in 2012, required businesses to charge 5 cents for each paper and plastic bag dispensed to customers, with a portion of the fee going to the county.

A 2023 report from the county’s Office of the Inspector General revealed that, between fiscal 2018 and 2022, the county probably failed to ensure that at least 2,100 businesses were complying with the law. As a result, the county lost out on as much as $8.2 million in carryout-bag tax revenue each year during that period —money meant to fund efforts to improve the county’s water quality, the report said.

While the lost revenue and flawed implementation process are concerning, Stewart said, a finding in the report that the tax, aimed at dissuading shoppers from relying on single-use carryout bags, doesn’t appear to have achieved that goal is particularly troubling.

The report charted bag usage during the five-year study period at businesses that were enrolled in the program. It showed an overall increase in bags purchased each year during that time.

“We were not actually meeting the goal of changing people’s behavior,” Stewart said.

She started looking at other jurisdictions and how they’d approached the problem differently. That led her to draft the bill she introduced to the council in mid-October.

The bill is co-sponsored by five council members. With six of the 11 members on board, it is almost certain to pass.

However, the legislation has been greeted with opposition from retailers worried about the cost of carrying out the new policy.

“Generally, we are not in favor of policies that will increase costs for businesses,” said Sarah Price, a spokesperson for the Maryland Retailers Alliance.

Most of the people who spoke at Tuesday’s public hearing — several representing environmental organizations — supported the measure.

“We have a moral responsibility to do whatever we can locally to reduce the tsunami of plastic, which is now a global crisis,” said Marion Edey, a volunteer with the Sierra Club. “The only true solution is to curb plastic production at its source.”

Others argued that there are more pressing social issues for the county to tackle, such as crime, rising taxes and increasing utility costs.

“Residents are focused on the issues that keep them up at night,” county resident Esther Wells said, adding that the bag legislation is “a nuisance bill.”

The legislation is designed to encourage residents to ditch both plastic and paper, and to bring their own reusable bags when shopping. The bill would allow items that need to be packaged in a more impervious material than paper — such as fresh meat and poultry, dry cleaning, or even a pet goldfish — to be in a plastic bag without a penalty. It would provide some exceptions for the paper-bag fee as well, including prescription drugs and restaurant leftovers.

Numerous municipalities across the country have been adopting similar policies in response to concerns aboutmicroplastics — a by-product of plastic bags and other materials — entering waterways and oceans, endangering those ecosystems.

These particles are also often ingested by humans, said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental advocacy group.

“Our world and our bodies are awash in plastics, in these microplastics. We see them even in newborn babies coming out. They’re already exposed in utero,” said Sass, who is also a longtime Montgomery County resident. “They don’t go away. That’s the point. They’re still there in 100 years.”

Health issues from plastics lie in their chemical composition. They’re petroleum-based products, Sass said, which means they have toxic features similar to those of oil and gas.

“They’re linked to cancer. They’re linked to organ toxicity, like kidney and liver toxicity, and they’re linked to developmental problems,” Sass said.

“Phasing out the single-use plastics, including plastic bags, is just key to addressing this plastic pollution crisis,” she said.

The county’s existing 5-cent carryout-bag tax was designed to not only deter residents from using disposable bags, but also to help finance waterway cleanup efforts through the county’s Water Quality Protection Charge fund. About 2.6millionto2.6 million to 2.6millionto3 million was collected from the tax for that purpose each year between fiscal 2018 and 2022, according to the inspector general’s analysis.

Stewart said she knew that whatever bill she created would have to compensate for the lost revenue from plastic bags. So, she also proposed doubling the paper-bag fee, hoping that would further deter disposable-bag use, she said.

Under her proposal, the retailer would retain 5 cents of the 10-cent fee for paper, and the county would receive the other 5.

Price, of the retailers alliance, said the legislation will hurt local businesses.

Paper bags currently cost businesses about 10 to 12 cents each to purchase from suppliers, Price said. That rate is expected to keep rising. If retailers have to give 5 of the 10 cents they’re charging for every bag to the county, then they’re losing money, she said.

“We’re just trying to break even,” Price said. “But we understand that this is already a sort of depended-on source of revenue in the county budget.”

Price also raised concerns with a unique provision in the Montgomery County bill.

Under Stewart’s proposal, those receiving food assistance, including from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC), would be excused from paying the paper-bag tax. Stewart said the intent was to mitigate the bill’s impact on lower-income people for whom 10 cents a bag is a heavier burden and for those who often transport groceries home via public transportation.

Price said that requirement is the first of its kind she’s seen in the state and foresees it presenting additional challenges for businesses.

“Cashiers are not allowed to ask the customer if they’re going to be paying with benefits, so it can be very complicated for the cashier to make that determination if the point-of-sale system is not already set up to differentiate between those customers,” Price said.

For businesses that don’t already have a system to detect food-assistance cards, the provision would require them to install that software to enable them to comply with the law. That costs money, Price said.

Stewart said the aim of that exemption is “for people who are on SNAP and WIC benefits, to make sure that they can shop with dignity.”

“Working with those businesses to figure out how to do that is something we very much want to do,” she said. “Our goal is really to make it easier for them, not harder.”

The council president stressed her commitment to making the policy as user-friendly as possible for retailers and shoppers as the bill moves through the council and, if passed, once it’s enacted.

If adopted, the bag ban will go into effect July 1, according to the bill.