City residents upset at the notion of paying for every paper bag they consume can complain all they want; they're free to do so while bags may soon cost 10 cents apiece. But whiners can't say charging for sacks is illegal, claim the legislation's author and the city attorney's office.
While the just-passed Proposition 26 figures to kill local governments by outlawing many sorts of fees, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi wrote his bag fee proposal with Prop. 26 in mind -- and says it's as ironclad as anything involving paper bags can be.
Deputy City Attorney Buck Delventhal notes that a traditional fee of the sort in which consumers' money went into a city fund directed toward some manner of environmental abatement for whatever calculated evils are inflicted by paper bags would, indeed, be illegal now. But that's not what Mirkarimi's legislation purports to do. Instead, it would merely require stores to put a cost on bags instead of handing them out for free.
"This is not money the city is demanding the fee-payer pay to the city," says Delventhal. "It's a minimum price the vendor must charge for the object." For you, 10 cents is 10 cents. But in the eyes of the law -- vive la différence.
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