Love it or hate it, you won’t find California’s new statewide ban on plastic bags taking effect this year … or ever, unless voters endorse it in November 2016.
State elections officials announced Tuesday that plastic bag manufacturers have gathered enough voter signatures to force a statewide vote via referendum at the next general election.
“California voters will now have the chance to vote down a terrible law,” said Lee Califf of the American Progressive Bag Alliance in a prepared statement.
The referendum, filed just days after Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 270 into law last Sept. 30, would give voters a chance to cancel the hotly debated law. The law would have gone into effect on July 1, and would have imposed a 10-cent fee on paper or other reusable bags. While the bill cleared a number of tricky political hurdles in making its way through the Legislature, the plastic bag industry never supported it.
In all, bag manufacturers spent more than $3.1 million to gather 809,810 signatures to force a vote on the ballot. Environmental and recycling groups lashed out Monday at the news that the referendum had qualified. Opponents argue the law is bad for the economy — lost bag-manufacturing jobs — and simply bad policy.