Kudos to Speaker Carl Heastie and the Assembly for joining the state Senate in killing the City Council’s “bag tax.” Let’s hope Gov. Cuomo goes along.
The council’s five-cent surcharge on plastic shopping bags is a punitive push to make shoppers shun plastic bags for reusable ones, supposedly to boost the environment.
In fact, the science there is iffy. The measure’s more a green gesture than a serious effort to clean up the planet, or even the city. And the “tax” clearly hits the poor (and the stores they frequent) the hardest.
State lawmakers rightly opposed saddling their low-income constituents with having to bring their own bags on every shopping trip or paying a dime for every double-bag.
Some fault Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito for failing to lobby the Assembly to back off. Sorry, no: She doesn’t have many fans, or even friends, in the Legislature.
No, her error was failing to negotiate with bag-tax opponents. No less than Bertha Lewis of the Black Institute warned against “using a stick before using a carrot.”
Cuomo reportedly is looking to broker a compromise, but he surely has better things to do with his time. Sign the bill, gov: Kill the tax for now, and let Mark-Viverito & Co. come up with something wiser.