Why Kevin de León Helped Kill the Plastic Bag Ban

By Baker Montgomery

I like to give elected officials the benefit of the doubt.

Even those of us who serve at the neighborhood council level, in unpaid volunteer positions, know it can demand a lot of time. We research policy issues, track budgets, and follow up with folks who speak at meetings or stop us at the grocery store. State lawmakers, paid to do their job full time, can find it even harder to know the facts about all the bills they vote on or answer every inquiry from voters. Plus, they have to spend time raising campaign money. 

So when I read that my state senator, Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), had voted in May to kill Senate Bill 405, which sought to ban single-use plastic shopping bags in supermarkets and pharmacies in California, I cut him some slack. He must have a good reason. Right?

After all, Los Angeles County had voted to ban the bags in 2010. And L.A. city did so in 2012, with final action earlier this summer. De León represents a big chunk of Los Angeles, so I guessed he must have a concern of great consequence to go against the grain of these policies.

Seventy cities and counties in California have passed similar bans. The goal is to reduce the billions of discarded plastic bags that hang from trees, cover hillsides and riverbanks, line landfills, coat beaches, and—because they can break into tiny pieces but not decompose—infiltrate the bodies of ocean creatures and fish. That endangers the food supply and our fishing industry. Double yuck.

I see discarded bags in my own neighborhood, in storm drains, in the arroyo, and in parks where kids play. I also see evidence in the L.A. Times and other sources that bag bans actually work. After L.A. County passed its ban, usage plummeted by more than 90 percent. That sounds about right.

At my grocery store, people of all ages and ethnicities bring reusable bags to carry out their purchases. The state bill, SB 405, would continue this trend and ban single-use plastic bags in California.

So why did Senator de León join with two other Eastside L.A. Democrats, Ricardo Lara and Ron Calderon, to kill the bill on the senate floor, leaving it just three votes shy of passage?

I hoped to hear his reason when we talked at the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council meeting in Eagle Rock City Hall on Wednesday, Aug. 7. And talk we did.

At first de León argued that he was an environmental champion. He was going to introduce a bill that went even further than SB 405, banning more kinds of plastics. Wow!

But I reminded him that every major environmental organization supported the state ban on single-use bags. His vote was antithetical to them. SB 405 is well-researched and has been gaining momentum for years. Why help kill the bill?

So the senator tried again. His real motive for rejecting the bill, he said, was the jobs it would eliminate. Not just anyone’s jobs, mind you, but “more than 1,000 Latinas, many of them immigrants, at several plants in my district,” he said.

But I reminded him that the Los Angeles Business Journal in 2012 and the City of Los Angeles in 2013 had carefully researched his job-loss allegation. The business journal found that some plastic bag-makers, such as Command Packaging in nearby Vernon, had revamped their production and now made reusable bags. And the L.A. Board of Public Works found that the city’s ban would affect not 1,000 jobs, but only 15. Besides, only one plant was affected—Crown Poly in Huntington Park. It sells to clients nationwide and has refused to alter its primary product line of single-use grocery bags even in the face of a changing market.

Ringing in my ears were the words of L.A. Councilmember José Huizar. When the council voted again in June to ban single-use bags, he urged his colleagues to vote Yes and said the action concluded “a decade of study.” Ten years. In that time, how many bag manufacturers had read the writing on the wall and downplayed or discontinued single-use bags? How many new jobs had sprung up in making cloth, synthetic, and mixed fiber reusable bags? 

And why did the senator invoke the race of workers whose jobs he vowed to protect at all costs? Was he trying to play on racial guilt or sympathy? Does he mean that good folks such as Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), the L.A. state senator who sponsored the statewide ban, and L.A. Supervisor Gloria Molina, who backed the L.A. County ban, are out to get immigrant Latinas? 

It was about this time that a call on Senator de León’s cell phone interrupted our conversation. I could see that the call came from Fabián Nuñez. 

Nuñez is the former speaker of the Assembly and widely known as de León’s political godfather, helping him win his first election in 2006 and supporting his current bid as senator to become the president pro tem of that body. Nuñez now happens to be a partner in the lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs. For the first half of 2013, while the fight over SB 405 was heating up in Sacramento, state lobbying disclosure reports indicate that Mercury’s highest-paying client was the American Progressive Bag Alliance. The alliance counts among its major donors the makers of plastic grocery bags. It’s that alliance that was paying Nunez’s firm to do all it could to scuttle the statewide bag ban.

I told the senator it was very interesting that Nuñez would be calling him. 

Baker Montgomery is a member of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council.

Sources:

1) DeLeon casts vote to kill CA bag ban: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/sen/sb_0401-0450/sb_405_vote_20130530_0123PM_sen_floor.html

2) More than 70 CA jurisdictions ban single-use plastic bags: http://yubanet.com/california/Supreme-Court-Upholds-Plastic-Bag-Ban-Again.php#.Udxl4Bxf4rg

3) Effectiveness of bag bans: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/la-makes-history-with-ban-on-plastic-bags-at-stores.html

4) L.A. Business Journal on adaptation of bag makers away from single-use plastic bags, while Crown Poly digs in heels: "Carrying On: Plastic bag makers cope differently with ban risk," by James Rufus Koren, Jan. 16, 2012.

5) City of L.A. research on just 15 jobs at risk from City of LA ban on single-use plastic bags:

http://www.surfrider.org/coastl-blog/entry/job-killer-or-job-creator [see first video, top of page, with Commissioner Steve Nutter's testimony at middle of brief video clip].

6) Statement of José Huizar in L.A. Council in urging "yes" vote for L.A. City plastic bag ban studied for 10 years: 

http://www.surfrider.org/coastl-blog/entry/job-killer-or-job-creator [see L.A. Council video in center of page, with Huizar near conclusion of video preceding vote tally].

7) Fabian Nuñez role in Kevin De León 2006 campaign: http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/29/local/me-chavez29

8) Fabian Nuñez role in Mercury Public Affairs: http://mercurypublicaffairs.com/staff-member/hon-fabian-núñez

9) Mercury lobbying for American Progressive Bag Alliance: http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Lobbying/Firms/Detail.aspx?id=1325943&session=2013&view=activity

10) Source of funding for American Progressive Bag Alliance: 

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11897175/1/american-progressive-bag-alliance-launches-california-campaign-correcting-the-record-on-plastic-bags.html