New Hampshire’s House Democrats passed a bill that would make it a crime to hand out a plastic straw. Policing, the new restriction had a starting cost of $93,000.00 per year.
Senate Democrats can’t possibly have been offended by the cost so it must have been the optics. Hiring a state union employee for nearly 100,000.00 dollars annually to answer the snitch line and “investigate” eye-witness reports, well – Democrats support that. But fining restaurants if servers handed out this convenience item without being asked sounds silly.
Senators on Wednesday said they found the straw bill unnecessary, as people and businesses are already doing away with straws.
The first clause in the statement is by far the most accurate.
The Committee voted the bill down 4-1
In other good news, the plastic ban bill – on single-use bags – has had a do-over. I have not seen the changes yet, but this Dave Solomon reports that they scrapped it and recycled it.
Rather than kill that bill on the Senate floor, however, Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes, D-Concord, proposed an amendment that wiped out the bill entirely and replaced it with legislation on municipal waste reduction.
The amendment, which passed in a 14-10 party-line vote, calls for all municipalities to file annual reports to the Department of Environmental Services on progress toward meeting the state’s statutory goal of diverting 40 percent of solid waste away from landfills or incinerators.
Dirty Dan Feltes, who is rumored to have eyes on the Governor’s office, may have realized that what Portsmouth wants is not in the best interest of the State. The seacoast city has been jonesing for a bag ban for years. All they needed was permission to proceed. The bag ban bill would have provided it. But it has slipped through their fingers yet again.
Not to worry. That bit of environmental posturing would do more harm than good. And not just to the environment. Not that House Democrats can escape their own extremism. They overwhelmingly support both measures and will likely try again next session.
