These women want to bag the city’s new bag “tax.”
Hours after the City Council on Thursday passed a 5-cent fee on plastic and paper shopping bags at grocery, convenience and other stores, an elderly Upper East Side woman and her daughter joined a chorus of complaints about the new law.
“It’s like they can’t find enough to charge us for, it really is. There’s a lot of people who can’t afford their basic groceries,” said C-Town shopper Ann Wren, 63, who lives with her 96-year-old mother, Joan.
Marilyn Henrion, 84, a Greenwich Village Morton Williams shopper, said that “the city is nickel and diming us to death.”
“The government interferes too much in our lives, telling us what we can and can’t do, what’s politically correct and now what kind of bags we can shop with. It’s the stupidest thing ever,” she said.
Most city seniors are on a fixed income.
The council voted 28 to 20 in favor of the bill, which will take effect on Oct. 1. It is supposed to encourage people to bring along reusable bags when they go shopping.
Councilman Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn), who co-sponsor of the bill, introduced the legislation in 2013 with the goal of reducing the use of plastic bags.
“While it may be contentious today, [the bill] is going to help New Yorkers together solve a real environmental problem,” said Lander ahead of the City Hall hearing.
The councilman and other backers of the bill, like co-sponsor Margaret Chin (D-Manhattan), say the fee would reduce 60 to 90 percent of the more than 9.3 billion plastic bags New Yorkers throw away annually by promoting the use of reusable bags.
Mayor de Blasio said Thursday that he looks “forward to signing” it into law.
Bill backers noted that the nickel surcharge is not a tax because retailers keep the money. Opponents don’t see it that way.
“It smells like a tax, looks like a tax, acts like a tax — it’s a tax . . . a tax that will cost New Yorkers hundreds of millions of dollars a year,” said Councilman Steven Matteo (R-SI).
The fee does not apply to purchases involving food stamps, food pantries, in-store plastic bags for produce and meat, prescription bags at pharmacies and take-out at restaurants.
Additional reporting by Sarah Trefethen, Kevin Fasick and Matthew Allan