Following the ruling by Judge James C. Chalfant of the Los Angeles Superior Court (Department 85) back on March 26 that the constitutionality of the Los Angeles County’s plastic and paper carryout bag ordinance will be upheld, the Los Angeles City Council voted overwhelmingly 13 to 1 to approve the ban.
Following similar ordinances that went into full effect here in Long Beach — along with ones in San Jose, Santa Monica, and Palo Alto — on August 1 of last year, the City of Los Angeles’s ban will affect some 7,500 stores and include the following provisions that replicated the ones in Long Beach:
- A six-month phase-out period for large retailers before banning plastic single-use bags;
- A 12-month phase-out period for small retailers before banning plastic single-use bags;
- Require all retailers to charge 10 cents per paper bag (collected by the retailer) beginning one year after enactment of the program and thereafter.
The petitioners against the Los Angeles ordinance in Schmeer vs. County of Los Angeles – who include Hilex Poly, a plastic bag manufacturer in South Carolina who submitted the writ – claimed the ordinance was unconstitutional under Proposition 26; specifically, that the ordinance’s ten-cent charge per paper bag constituted an improper tax which should have been voted upon by the entire county electorate. In shorter terms: the county was making money from a tax not properly voted in.
However, Judge Chalfant ruled that Proposition 26 was intended to apply to measures which specifically generated revenue —and that the county’s Plastic and Paper Carryout Bag Ordinance did not generate revenue for the county since the retailers collect the money; nor did it meet the “special tax” definition since no portion of the ten-cent charge per paper bag is collected and spent by Los Angeles County to pay for any public program.