What’s the Dealio with the Bag Fees?

What happened on January 1, 2023?

In 2021, the Colorado State Legislature passed, and Governor Polis signed into law, a bill entitled “Management Of Plastic Products (HB-1162)”. The law requires the following:

  • Between January 1, 2023, and January 1, 2024, a store may furnish a recycled paper carryout bag or a single-use plastic carryout bag to a customer at the point of sale if the customer pays a fee of 10 cents per bag or a higher fee adopted by the municipality or county in which the store is located.

  • On and after January 1, 2024, a store may furnish only a recycled paper carryout bag to a customer at the point of sale at a fee of 10 cents per bag or a higher fee imposed by the municipality or county in which the store is located.

  • A store is required to remit, on a quarterly basis beginning April 1, 2024, 60% of the carryout bag fee revenues to the municipality or county within which the store is located and may retain the remaining 40% of the carryout bag fee revenues. A municipality or county may use its portion of the carryout bag fee revenues to pay for its administrative and enforcement costs and any recycling, composting, or other waste diversion programs or related outreach or education activities.

What’s the really behind the Bag Fees?

On the face of it, the intention of this new bag fee (a.k.a “bag tax”) appears to be to reduce waste going into landfills from the use of paper or single-use plastic carryout bags.

The other way to look at it is that the State of Colorado is manipulating our behavior through a punitive bag fee (which we didn’t get to vote on as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) requires), which restricts your choice on how you bag your groceries. Instead of leaving it up to you to decide if you would rather use reusable bags - which many already people do - the State of Colorado is forcing you down that path. You can either bring your own bags from home, buy reusable bags that cost up to $10 each at the store, or pay 10 cents for each disposable bag that you use at the checkout.

This cost is passed directly to each family that buys groceries, where costs have gone up dramatically due to inflation - just look at the price of eggs. This means even a higher bill for you to just carry your groceries out of the store.

What does the City and County of Broomfield stand to gain for the bag fee?

The real kicker on the policy is that local governments, including the City and County of Broomfield, stand to gain additional tax receipts for each single use bag that you are forced to purchase. For each 10 cent single use bag that you pay for, the City and County of Broomfield gets 6 cents or 60% of the fee. The store where the single use bag gets the other 40% of the fee.

According to a recent 9news.com article, Colorado goes through about 4.6 million single use bags a day, or 287.50 bags per person, per year. For the families that make up the 77,000 people in Broomfield:

But it’s not about the bag fees, right?

Not so fast. The law has some problems because (1) the “fees” cannot be submitted to local municipalities until January 1, 2024, and (2) not all local governments want the headache of enforcing and collecting the “fees”.

In a January 25, 2023 story on CBS4 News, State Representative Alex Valdez, a prime sponsor of the new law, said, with a wry smile, that he couldn’t imagine why local governments would not want the money (from the bag fee / tax).

"We saw it as a great problem for local governments to have. You have a new stream of income coming in, it's dedicated to helping you set up a process to clean up the environment of your communities," he said.  

So, rather than doing the right thing for families and repeal the law, State Representative Valdez would rather do the wrong thing and “fix” the law so that local municipalities could get another windfall of revenue from the bag fee (tax).

What can you do?

Contact your legislators and let them know what you think about the newly enacted bag fee. Ask them to suspend and then repeal the bag fee and stop filling coffers of the state and local governments at the expense of Colorado’s hard working families.