After failing to win support in the Virginia General Assembly for a new tax on grocery bags, Arlington County officials have turned to Capitol Hill. Arlington is seeking a 5-cent tax on paper and plastic bags that could affect retailers nationwide.
Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., who fought unsuccessfully for the Plastic Bag Reduction Act in 2010, plans to reintroduce similar legislation on April 22, or Earth Day, a spokeswoman said.
Arlington can’t impose the tax on its own because of Virginia’s Dillon Rule, which limits the powers of local governments to those explicitly granted by the General Assembly. With a Republican majority in the House of Delegates, however, county officials weren’t surprised that a bag tax bill introduced by Del. Adam Ebbin, D-Arlington, never made it out of committee.
“We didn’t really expect it to pass. We’re not unrealistic,” said Arlington County Board member Barbara Favola. “We’re trying to promote certain principles that we care and feel should be implemented, and it queues off our progressive values.”
Favola cited the success of the District’s bag tax — there’s been a drop in the number of bags used, and tax revenue is dedicated to cleaning up the Anacostia River. Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett also recently proposed a 5-cent bag tax that would apply to virtually all stores.
Favola acknowledges that the bag tax’s chance aren’t any better than they were in the Virginia General Assembly, and Moran’s bill may fail again.
“We know it takes several years of education and information” to change peoples’s minds, Favola said. “But you’ve got to start somewhere. If something’s worth doing, you’ve got to put it in your package.”
