New York City – Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) today called the Mayor’s plan to collect a six-cent surcharge for plastic bags “outrageous,” saying this is “the wrong place and the wrong time” for this initiative.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
“Bloomberg is essentially saying, ‘Look, we can possibly generate $16 million with this scheme, so the public be damned,’” said an incensed Hikind. Wall Street’s meltdown has already cost New York State 160,000 jobs, and the Mayor just yanked the $400 City property tax rebate out from under struggling homeowners.
“While Bloomberg is busy seeing green, New Yorkers, especially in my district, are seeing red.” Hikind said. “How does the Mayor expect New Yorkers to have any cash to spare when people are already overtaxed and overburdened?”
The Mayor’s proposal, which requires the approval of the City Council before it becomes law, will charge shoppers a six-cent fee for every plastic bag used at all checkout registers. Five of the six cents will be directed to City coffers, while one cent goes to the merchants as payment for complying with the measure. Current estimates put New Yorkers’ plastic bag usage at one billion bags per year. The City plans to implement the fee by next summer.
Hikind argued, “The Mayor can call his plan whatever he wants, but at the end of the day, it’s nothing more than a tax, tax, tax. This matter should be brought before the State legislature for consideration. I am confident that given the opportunity, my colleagues and I will have the good sense to defeat this proposal.”
cant wait till bloomberg will leave new york
the mayor could afford to pay for everyone’s plastic bag!!!! is there a tax on toilet paper yet???
Oh stop it!
If people would bring their OWN bags, they wouldn’t have to pay a cent! Hikind is making it sound like everyone MUST pay extra, and it’s simply not true. Don’t be so lazy and uncaring about the environment (not to mention more dependent on Arab oil for the petroleum to make the plastic bags) and you’ll be fine.
can some one explain why 6 cent and not…
some of us mothers will be shlepping boxes from the store! I dont think so.
Not that i dont make orders and receive boxes. But now we will not want to spend money on bags, chas v’sholom. So we will make more orders, have more boxes to recycle to make the city more messy ,to collect money on tickets for unclean sidewalks etc.
JUst give me a plastic bag please, i need to throw out some diapers.
I can collect it in a box and send it to city hall.
I still need those bags, and my food pays for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is probably how this guy became a billionaire.
Hikind is right. This is outrageous.
or i will buy everything online,or i will have them deliver it to me..
America wake up,socialism is on the march from Washington DC all across the once great democracy
every other day you hear another fee added to breath the air in new york city.
one day congestion pricing, the next day its tolls on the bridges, then away with the property tax then a hike in the tickets now a fee for using plastic bags, the WORKING CLASS people are suffering, you dont hear a proposal to rerduce the section 8 program, or to limit the years on the program, can you imagine there are people n the section 8 program from the day they are married till they die ! they just never make any money within the 45 years of working, how about reduce the wic checks how about reduce the food stamps, how about all the goodies the POOR are lucky to recieve – the poor equals the non working class those you see with the tefilin 12 in the noon because uncle same takes care of them, that is not touched, anybody has any solution how to HELP the working class people who work 3 weeks out of 4 to pay their rent, who work to buy those nice peaches and plumbs the non working guy enjoys to eat, or the free schooling the non working guy enjoys for his kids.
Will Food stamps pay for my bags…? I dont even thing it pays for a grocery to enforce such a low, this mean that ppl will think twice b4 they buy a kleinekeit & will rather ask 4 box deliveris & the stores will have to hire more mexican delivery guys etc.
Dov Hikind again has shown the courage to stand up to outrageous politicians and Bloomberg is at the top of the class and this bum wants another 4 years. Throw him out now.
First the six cents for bags so you get shopping delivered in boxes. Next the one dollar tax per box so people back out of deliveries, instead gantze mishpoches drien zich un frien zich in grocery.
GET HIM OUTTA OFFICE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You know what ppl? All of your kvetching annoys me to the point of insanity. YOU VOTED FOR THIS MORON! when he was runing it was all “bloomy this, mike that!” and now you voted for obama. you did – i didn’t. so stop kvetching. joseph you’re such a cliche. the environment is fine and stop being so arrogant as to think you could save it if it wasn’t.
This is just the beginning. If he gets his way, he will tax everything and anything. Let’s stop him before it’s too late. In principle I’ll refrain from buying plastic bags until this “gezeiroh” (yes it is a gezeirah) gets rescinded.
can you imagin how the city will look when everyone will go shopping with this old style metal folding ‘vegalech’ which our baabe’s using when they going in the grocery…
#6 Of course there’s tax on toilet paper!
For all those who fool themselves think 6 cents ma kul harash… Let’s not forget before this guy came into office ppl. Also figured sometimes maybe its worth the risk to jump into a store & risk the 35 dollar parking ticket now its at 110, same here before you know this guy gets another term & the price per bag is at 25 cents. If the City is so desperatly bleeding & these 6 cents realy count let them cut all those cradit card that the city emloyees enjoy on free lunches ETC.
soon he will charge for every METZITZEH BPEH that we make
i dont understand why you guys are so angry, live is still not so expensive, you can still cross the street for “FREE”…
I bought some of those bags from Waldbaum’s for 99 cents. They’re more durable than the plastic bags we get. Might be worthwhile.
We should all start saving our Glatt Mart bags! Those are the BEST!
Wake up America, this time you lot are behind times – here in the UK many supermarkets (not the heimishe ones yet) charge 3p or 6p per carrier bag to encourage re-use of bags for conservation purposes. All the groceries now charge a fee for deliveries on orders under a certain amount. I imported a large shopping cart from the US a few years ago and it gets plenty of use!!
I love Hikind for his recent actions against molesters… but i honestly think he missed the point here and is making people angry for no reason!
Bloomberg (and anyone else around the world that cares about the environment) is working very hard to save our planet that WE LIVE on and is reducing our dependence on oil from the countries that we have major conflict with!!
I used to be the shopping bag lover, yet since i opened my eyes a little bit and did some research I realized that I was WRONG!
Plastic bags hurt our environment, hurt our health, our food gets poisoned, animals die and we hurt our children’s future and causes us to depend on things we don’t need….
here is a easy solution for everyone (and all you naive complainers): like i bought myself, 7 – 8 canvas fabric large bags that i can wash and that has a lot more durability then the plastic bags that is bad for every reason … all the bags cost me 5$ … it did not make me broke …. And also let’s not forget … so many of us get their groceries delivered in carton boxes….
Please recycle, please stop being so ignorant, please care some more for our health, planet and for our future generation!
Here if you care, please read:
http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php
http://environmental-activism.suite101.com/article.cfm/say_no_to_plastic_bags
Excerpt:
Consider the following shocking facts about plastic shopping bags:
• Plastic bags are made of polyethylene
• Polyethylene is a petroleum product
• Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption
• Four to five trillion plastic bags are manufactured each year
• Americans use over 380 billion polyethylene bags per year
• Americans throw away approximately 100 billion polyethylene bags per year
• Of those 100 trillion plastic bags, 1% are recycled
• It takes 1000 years for polyethylene bags to break down
• As polyethylene breaks down, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain
• Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die per year by ingesting plastic bags
• Plastic bags are often mistaken as food by marine mammals. 100,000 marine mammals die yearly by eating plastic bags.
• These animals suffer a painful death, the plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death
• Plastic bag choke landfills
• Plastic bags are carried by the wind into forests, ponds, rivers, and lakes
• There are alternatives to plastic bags. All of this death and pollution is unnecessary
The 6 pennies is just a wakeup call and also almost to push those ppl that don’t care into having to behave right by default!! Thank you to Bloomberg for getting something right, and thank you to everyone that cares and does things to make our world a better place!
Why does this upset people…Is it an affront to our freedom. We’ve ALWAYS gotten free bags…Well cost is cost. So cigarettes are $9/pack. Business owners will eat the 6 cents or pass it on to consumers in some other way. I lived in Germany in the 80’s. It cost 20 pfennings for a a bag. Other people brough in mesh bags. 6 cents a bag x 30 bags a week = $1.80 x 52 weeks a year = $93.60/yr… 2 months ago I paid $70 to fill up my car…This week $39 in Jersey. Get over it.. Now if you want to talk about money and aggravation let’s talk New Tolls on East river crossings!!
Moving to NJ, enough of these stupid gezairos!!
I just moved out of NYC. Good riddance!
#5 & #25 have great points.
Congestion pricing and tax on shopping bags have a lot of sense. Unfortunately, nobody wants to look into Mayor’s proposals and work on it together with him. The Mayor really cares about people!
good luck for the bag manufacters!!! that the groceries will start selling shopping bags per bundles!!!! and let’s see how the mayer will like that!!!!
And now, let’s get our pots ready to pick up the milk in the grocery (or farm..) before crazy Bloomberg decides to ban the plastic milk bottles..
I live in Queens — but close enough to Nassau that I do all my shopping there. TOO BAD ON YOU, Mayor Mike!
Lead by Example and for once make a kiddush hashem VS. a chillul hashem ??
We should be the ones having large recyclingh containers and all of us that have sewing skills, sew some strong washable fabric bags to show that we DO care about the world. We have large families and we sure can show that we can make a difference by leading by example. Can you immagine how much less oil woul be needed if our communities make an innitative with achdus ? can achdus be used for a good cause ?
You dont know how badly I wish this could happen, for once , instrad of constant negativity ….