Reply to MoCo plastic bag ban and tax increase on paper bags

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Reply to "MoCo plastic bag ban and tax increase on paper bags"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Montgomery County hasn’t met a tax idea it won’t pass.
[/quote]

This. Why tax paper bags 10 cents? They are usually made from recycled paper, and can easily be recycled or composted.[/quote]

Because it’s not about the environment. [b]It’s not about reducing amount of bags.[/b]

Montgomery County sees its citizens as cash cows. They were find everything and anything, (including the rain!) to tax. And the citizens keep voting in the same people. Montgomery County will present this tax as a virtuous and necessary tax to “protect the environment” and obviously if you’re against it, then you are against the environment therefore a terrible human being.

This new tax will be used to fund unnecessary pet projects.

And before you accuse me of being Maga and a right winger, I’m not. I bring my own bags and when I do get a plastic bag, it’s always reused that’s a trash bag.[/quote]

It actually is about reducing the amount of bags.

Also, nobody is taxing rain. The state tax was about stormwater runoff from your property, which has to be dealt with somehow; who do you think should pay for dealing with stormwater runoff from your property, if not you?[/quote]

The Office of the Inspector General's report on this issue has shown that the bag tax has not been effective and plastic bag use has actually increased since the bag tax took effect.[/quote]

Has population increased? What about other contributing factors?[/quote]

IG Report explicitly found that the contention from the Department of Environmental Protection that bag tax was effective was without evidence and bag use has increased significantly. [/quote]

DP here. It took some digging, but here is a link to the report:

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/OIG/Resources/Files/PDF/IGActivity/FY2023/OIG23-15.pdf

It lists the usual administrative failures you'd expect when it comes to the County and implementation (no list of retailers who _should_ be paying the fee; no enforcement, etc). Then in terms of the benefit to the environment:

page 14 of PDF (can't copy-paste, so summarizing here)
"the county has not undertaken a comprehensive effort to regularly assess the amount of litter in the county waterways..[...] without such studies, it's impossible to know the true impact of the law. In fact, the data shows an increase in the number of bags purchase from FY18 to FY22"

[/quote] Thank you. This clearly shows that the Council is acting prematurely on this bill. This has not been assessed as it should.[/quote]

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