COLUMBUS – It’s make-or-break time for a controversial bill that would stop Ohio communities from regulating single-use plastic bags. And it looks like House Bill 242 will make it, but only because its sponsors had good timing.
Conservation and local-government groups are urging Gov. Mike DeWine to veto the legislation but DeWine has indicated he would sign the one-year moratorium bill, because it is temporary, though he is a supporter of communities’ home-rule rights to their own regulations.
“I would normally veto this bill, but we are in the COVID period. I think it makes sense during this period of time…So, I will sign the bill, but if I get another bill in a year or like that, I probably won’t sign it,” DeWine told reports Tuesday.
DeWine cites concerns that the coronavirus would be more likely to spread through the use of reusable bags and containers but Elizabeth Ellman, chair of Bexley’s Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee, which helped institute a ban in that city, says that theory has been debunked.
“Entire states have deemed single-use plastic bag bans to be safe and are therefore re-insituting their bans. Prohibiting governments that can implement single-use plastic bag bans safely from doing so infringes on their rights to protect members of their communities ,” Ellman said.
More than five million pounds of plastic litter is in Lake Erie and $4 million tax dollars are spent each year removing liter from the state’s highways, according to Elisa Yoder Mann with the Sierra Club Ohio.