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Bagging bags

The city has a shot at doing away with the ubiquitous product — will they take it?

By Kate Bradshaw

T hey're as ubiquitous in consumer culture as they are dangerous to the natural environment, and the chorus of voices calling on us to rethink our collective attitude for plastic shopping bags is growing. And offificials in St. Pete are hoping to get rid of them. By the time this issue of CL hits the street, members of the St. Petersburg City Council may have denot to move forward on an ordinance that could ultimately get rid of most types of plastic bags within the city. 

As much as most consumers take them for granted, the plastic shopping bags retailers dole out by the dozens are a scourge to the environment and local infrastructure. They aren't biodegradable, they're detrimental to wildlife and they break recycling equipment because so many consumers think that they're recyclable (not so much). St. Petersburg is a coastal city, which means they often wash out into the bay and the gulf. So the city's more forward-thinking representatives want them gone, yesterday.

"The irony is, we chose to live in an environmentally sensitive place because we liked it. So with that comes some obligation to not make it a garbage can," said Councilman Karl Nurse, who is confifident the proposal will move forward on Thursday, July 26, and that it's got a pretty good shot before a full council. "It would surprise me if we had fewer than three of the fifive votes we need just at hello," he said.

The fact that only one city has such a ban in effect isn't so much a matter of lack of political will as it is an arguably lopsided power dynamic between local and state government. When Florida lawmakers (or big-business lobbyists) don't like something cities and counties are doing, they pass a bill that negates whatever it is a municipality wants to do — so for years cities were barred by Florida law from banning plastic shopping bags despite public support for doing so.

But Coral Gables, in defifiance of state law, adopted a plastic bag ban (with exemptions for trash bags and bags for transporting pet waste, dry-cleaning, and prescriptions, as well as previously used or biodegradable bags). The city prevailed in ensuing litigation.

"Because of the way the law was written, it set up a set of laws for municipalities that had passed bans around a certain date and there was only one, Coral Gables, that had passed it in a certain time frame, and so they were the only local entity whose law was invalidated by the state statute... and that's why they ruled it unconstitutional," said Mike Alfano, campaign manager of the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, a group that is leading the fifight against state-level preemption. (Though the Florida Retail Federation, Progresso and the State of Florida appealed).

With the plastic bag preemption struck from the books, environmentalists in St. Petersburg see now as the best time to pass such a measure — and, possibly, other measures banning ecologically harmful substances from the city, like Styrofoam or plastic straws.

"At the moment, I think that this is our best shot, that this is the one where we have the strongest legal chance of success," Nurse said of the plastic bag ban. "The state has preempted us from dozens of things, but this is the one... our lawyers think this is our best opportunity to push back. So if we were successful, there could be others. It's really sort of staggering, how the legislature considers cities to be the enemy. This is the most hostile legislature we've had to cities in the 40-odd years that I've been [engaged in politics]."

Yet even if local governments are emboldened to bar items that are objectively a threat to local waterways and wildlife (not to mention the local aesthetics inarguably essential to tourism), the next legislative session always looms on the horizon, and lawmakers could devise a plan to out-maneuver communities.

Alfano cites Missouri as an example. There, a court said St. Louis — which has a higher cost of living than most areas of the state — could set its minimum wage higher than that of the rest of the state despite having been preempted from doing so. Then, state lawmakers there turned around and, as Alfano put it, "fast-tracked a preemption bill to essentially invalidate and overturn the St. Louis minimum wage." That was after the new wage had gone into effect, which means that workers' pay got cut and there was nothing they could do. So it's feasible that something similar could happen with Coral Gables and, if its plastic bag ban passes, St. Petersburg.

"I think that there's a mentality that folks at the state legislature think that they know better than local communities and want to have that control put in place," Alfano said. "And a lot of times this is motivated, that we've seen across the country, by special interests advocating for the laws." Meanwhile, on the local level, offificials in St. Pete are engaging in a public awareness/ input campaign as they embark on fifinalizing their version of the ban.

Don'ts and don'ts

Trying to quash plastic bag bans isn't the only way the state is ignoring your will.

By Kate Bradshaw

B ack in February, we wrote about how a law banning cities and counties from passing any local regulations on guns whatsoever put St. Petersburg in a bit of a legal pickle. Councilwoman Lisa Wheeler-Bowman had wanted to pass a resolution calling for stronger assault riflfle restrictions in the wake of the Pulse nightclub massacre. It was a symbolic gesture, but the city's legal department was cautious, given that in 2010 state lawmakers passed a bill preempting any local attempt from regulating guns. Fortunately for Wheeler-Bowman, since the resolution was merely an expression of sentiment, the state opined that the council was free to do so. But the ordeal had a chilling effect on local elected offificials, given that penalties for defying the law included ffines and removal from office. 

"Imagine being told that, as a councilperson, you cannot speak, not even your opinion on any type of gun regulations," Wheeler-Bowman said at the time. This week, in conjunction with the possible launching of an effort to ban plastic shopping bags in St. Pete after a court overturned Florida's preemption on plastic bag bans, we'd like to once again examine the issue of preemption.

Because we simply cannot talk about it enough. In recent years — some argue going back to about 2010, and the industry-funded Tea Party takeover of state legislatures as well as Congress — legislatures have been keen on undermining local control. It's a reflflection of the great cultural divide in Florida, where Republicans have a disproportionate amount of control despite the state having a relatively even number of R's and D's (and a growing number of Independent and nonparty voters). And the only way to fifix this is for Democrats and progressives to be much more diligent in showing up to the polls and voting down the ballot, even in off years.

In the meantime, the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions is leading the charge against efforts to preempt local control, largely via spreading public awareness of what it is and how it's happening.

Mike Alfano, manager of the campaign, said it's a lot easier for industry leaders whose profifits may see a ding if a city or county wants to limit plastic straws or create a living wage that's higher than the state minimum to approach friendly state lawmakers who can push blanket policies rather than try to lobby dozens of cities and counties.

"They see it as a lot easier to go to the state legislature and lobby than it is to go to the 415, 416 [municipalities] that we have and the 67 counties and talk to folks at the local level," Alfano said. "And it's a lot harder for folks to have their say in these situations. When it's a city council or a county commission taking up a measure, these are people that you see in the grocery store and can go after work to a meeting and have your voice heard. Or easily meet with your local elected offificial."

It's also easier to ignore opposition at the state level when, during session, it's harder for opponents of a proposed preemption to get all the way up to Tallahassee, a fourhour drive for Tampa Bay residents and an eight-hour-plus drive for those coming from South Florida.

Thus, in addition to bans on guns and environmentally damaging practices, regulators have sought what Alfano calls an "extremely draconian" ban on "sanctuary" cities, laws against local hiring ordinances and even a blanket preemption that would have prevented cities and counties from enacting any type of regulation on businesses, from imposing more accountability in cases of wage theft to barring any type of discrimination.

"It's an attack on some of the foundational democratic principles of our country, where folks can elect folks at the local level to put laws in place that reflflect the values of their local community," Alfano said.

"The good news is that cities have been fifighting back, and the recent court victory for Coral Gables over its plastic bag ban has of course emboldened St. Petersburg in its effort to become the second city — and the biggest one — to stand up to the state."