Softened Retail Bag Ordinance Returns to Council

A City Council proposal that originally would have all but repealed the city’s retail bag ordinance returned from a committee, keeping a ban on plastic bags but rolling back other parts.

The proposed change in New Britain city ordinances (local laws) that was introduced by Ald. Kristian Rosado (R-2) and Ald. Daniel Salerno (R-AL) would have repealed most of the current ordinance, or local law, that was approved in 2019, that bans plastic single use retail carry-out bags and requires charges for paper carry out bags.

Ald. Aram Ayalon (D-3), one of the original sponsors of the current retail bag ordinance, had sharply criticized the rollback proposal when it was introduced. But Ayalon and Ald. Francisco Santiago (D-5) are now joining Rosado and Salerno in sponsoring the version of the proposal returning to the full Council.

After being introduced on January 8, 2020, the rollback proposal was referred to the Council’s Committee on Administration, Finance and Law. That committee initially tabled the proposal after public opposition to the roll-back.

But the committee took up the proposal again on March 4th and sent an amended version to the full Council.

The new version of the proposal returning from that committee retains the city’s ban on plastic retail carry-out bags. The city’s ban has only temporary effect, because a state law provides for a statewide ban on plastic carry-out bags, starting July 1, 2021.

That state law allows explicitly allows municipalities to also, as New Britain’s current ordinance does, regulate paper carry-out bags. The current ordinance requires retailers to charge ten cents per paper carry-out bag. But the proposed change returning for action in the full Council would repeal the requirement that retailers charge for paper carry-out bags.

The ordinance, as a whole, is intended to, “encourage the use of reusable carryout bags.”

The revised ordinance would retain the requirement in the current ordinance that paper carry-out bags be recyclable, but would repeal the requirement that the paper bags, themselves, be made, in part, from recycled content.

The proposal is on the agenda of the March 11, 2020 City Council meeting. Since the proposal has returned from a Council committee, the full Council could give it final approval at the upcoming meeting.

In other news, the full Council is set to consider final approval of a proposal to make the city ordinances gender-neutral. Most of the changes in the initial proposal involved changing personal pronouns, such as changing “he” to “he/she” and “him” to “him/her”.

But, the New Britain Progressive had reported, other jurisdictions are moving away from “he/she” references as a way to make their laws gender-neutral, such as a California legislative resolution that says that, “The use of ‘they’ as a singular pronoun is inclusive of transgender or nonbinary persons in addition to persons of the male and female genders.”

The version of the ordinance proposal returning to the full Council changed pronouns in the original proposal, such as from “he/she” to “he/she/they” and “him/her” to “him/her/them.”