(Editorial from www.roanoke.com 01/29/2008)
Editorial: Bagging Dillon's rule
The question isn't one of paper or plastic, but state or local control.
A story in Monday's edition, "Paper or plastic? Or neither?" raises the question that stores and customers are asking throughout the country: Which way of toting home groceries causes the least environmental damage?
Municipal leaders across the United States are answering that with ordinances that ban plastic bags. They recognize that not only are valuable fossil fuels consumed to make them, the flimsy bags don't ever seem to disappear.
The bags aren't easily broken down by the elements, and they contribute to roadside litter, cling to trees, strangle shrubbery, and are swept away in streams. At the very least they are an unsightly mess; at their worst, they kill or injure wildlife.
Yet Virginia's local leaders couldn't ban plastic bags even if every one of their constituents stormed their meetings demanding they do so.
Why? The Dillon Rule. Its restrictions forbid local leaders from exercising any power not explicitly given them by the state. This means that unless lawmakers in Richmond specifically say that city council in Roanoke can ban plastic bags, council is powerless to do so.
Micromanaging local affairs will most likely endure in Virginia long after the last plastic bag returns to the earth.
About the best localities can hope for is legislation such as Senate Bill 711 that was introduced by Frederick Quayle, a Republican senator from Suffolk. Quayle proposes allowing any locality that so desires to ban retailers from using plastic bags unless the bags are made of durable plastic, at least 2.25 mils thick and are designed for multiple reuse.
The bill is before the Local Government committee as are others that chip away at the Dillon Rule. Another Quayle bill, for example, would allow localities the option to ban indoor smoking.
Lawmakers could cede a small slice of control to localities and still retain the power to enact statewide bans on both smoking and plastic bags if ever they raised enough affirmative votes.
It's time to end Dillon's oppressive rule over the minutiae of local government. The General Assembly should begin work on a constitutional amendment to grant localities genuine self-governance.
Praise to the Roanoke Times for Seeing the Constitutional Issue Involved!!!!!!!
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