nothin Plastic Bag Vote Delayed | New Haven Independent

Plastic Bag Vote Delayed

Sam Gurwitt Photo

Council member Macdowall: We’ll be back.

You can keep asking for those single-use plastic bags in Hamden, at least for now.

A much-anticipated vote on a bill to ban them ended up not taking place at Monday night’s Legislative Concil meeting.

District Nine Rep. Brad Macdowall, who introduced the bill, explained that members of the council had concerns about how the ordinance would be enforced. So they have delayed a vote until the next meeting.

In the original bill, the Quinnipiac Valley Health District (QVHD) would be solely responsible for enforcement. QVHD already does inspections in restaurants and stores.

Council members raised questions about whether the agency would have to go back to businesses to enforce fines, and whether the agnecy would receive some of the revenue from those fines.

Council members decided that it was best to postpone the vote on the bill until the Feb. 19 meeting to look into the enforcement issue. Though the language is still in the process of being drafted, under the proposed new version, QVHD will share enforcement duty with the town’s litter enforcement officer. When QVHD does its inspections, it will notify the litter enforcement officer of any businesses that do not comply with the ordinance, and the litter enforcement officer will then go back and issue a fine.

Macdowall told the Independent that, despite the talk about enforcement, he does not anticipate that the town will end up collecting very many fines.

This is not meant to be a punitive thing,” he said.

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