By Brad Witt
Witt, D-Clatskanie, represents House District 31 in the Oregon Legislature
Throughout my time as the state representative for House District 31, I have worked tirelessly to prioritize working people, promote good jobs and a healthy environment while taking steps to protect our most vulnerable communities. With those values and the concerns of working Oregonians in mind, I recently cast the lone Democratic “no” vote on House Bill 2509, the proposed statewide plastic bag ban.
Let me be clear, I support banning single-use plastic bags. This is an admirable idea that will help us reduce waste and decrease some of the damage being done to our environment, especially marine life. When I learned, however, that the bill contains a mandatory fee on locally produced, recyclable paper bags –with funds directly steered to grocers’ and retailers’ pockets, I had to stand up in opposition. To my knowledge, the Oregon Legislature has never created a mandatory fee on consumers purely for the benefit of a business interest. We should not start now with this paper bag fee.
I have been a sawmill worker, union representative in the seafood, grocery and forest industries, and was secretary-treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO for 14 years. If this paper bag fee is imposed, it will impact family-wage jobs and working Oregon families. The majority of bags we use are made right here in Oregon at plants that support good union jobs. The pulp and paper industry alone provides nearly 4,300 jobs and over $370 million in annual payroll income in Oregon.
There is no doubt that Oregon workers will be hurt by this paper bag fee. California passed a similar bill two years ago. The result: a 61 percent reduction in paper bag usage six months after the bill went into effect, according to a February 2019 report for the California legislature. Such a drop in paper bag usage would be devastating on unionized manufacturing jobs, forest product jobs and our rural economies.
If the idea behind this bill is to ban plastic, that same California report shows that California grocers have continued their reliance on plastic, handing out 1.5 thick plastic “reusable” bags for every recyclable paper bag.
The paper bag fee is extraneous to the bill’s purpose and we know that this new fee isn’t necessary to make a plastic bag ban work. The same grocers demanding a paper bag fee as a prerequisite for this bill offer free paper bags in Portland where plastic bags are already banned. If they wanted to charge for paper, they could and they can. They certainly do not need a government mandate to institute what could be called a grocery tax.
I will always fight for the working people of Oregon. While I support the plastic bag ban, I voted “no” on HB 2509 because the paper bag fee, unnecessary to the ultimate goal of the legislation, would hurt working families and impact Oregon jobs. I hope my colleagues in the Senate will think carefully about these concerns and choose to remove the paper bag fee from HB 2509 before passing it.