By CHRIS POWELL
State legislators think they have found a new way to protect Connecticut’s environment. They are about to criminalize releasing party balloons into the air, subject to a $20 fine. The pending legislation would replace the current law that imposes a $500 fine on anyone who releases 10 or more balloons within 24 hours, as if anyone is really counting.
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Of course the legislation will turn out to be an idle gesture. Who is going to call the police about balloon releases and litter? Which departments will hurry to dispatch officers to investigate such complaints? Which prosecutors will put aside plea-bargaining felonies to handle party balloon cases?
The bill takes the wrong approach to the problem even as a better approach is practically staring legislators in the face: the approach they have taken to the extensive litter caused by the sale of tiny liquor bottles, “nip” bottles.
Rather than impose a return deposit on the bottles, which liquor stores don’t want to take responsibility for and which are not recyclable, Connecticut has imposed a 5-cent-per-bottle wholesale tax on “nips” with the revenue distributed to municipalities in accordance with the number of “nips” sold in each. Municipalities can use the money for environmental purposes of their choosing, and most spend it on anything except collecting the “nip” litter that continues to deface roadsides and parks.
So why not a wholesale tax on party balloons too? It might not raise much but it would raise far more than any fines collected from balloon-release scofflaws.
If legislators really cared about the environment more than they care about feeding the insatiable pension and benefit society that is state government, they wouldn’t bother with party balloon legislation. They would impose on “nip” bottles a deposit fee large enough to incentivize people to return their bottles or to collect them from roadsides and parks — say, a dollar per bottle — and require liquor stores to refund the deposits and dispose properly of the litter they have generated.
Or else legislators should just outlaw sale of “nip” bottles. A hefty deposit fee would probably have the same effect, since liquor stores would stop selling them if state government stopped letting liquor stores profit from covering the state in trash.
But the legislature won’t even impose a special fine on anyone caught improperly discarding a “nip” bottle, a fine like the one about to be imposed — in theory — on party balloon scofflaws.
Why the disparate treatment of these two littering industries?
It’s because while the litter caused by party balloons is nothing compared to the litter caused by “nip” bottles, balloon sellers are few, while “nip” bottle sellers have outlets — sometimes dozens — in every legislator’s district, fiercely defend their privileges, and finance a trade association that has controlled liquor legislation for decades, trampling the public interest by inducing the legislature to forbid price competition in liquor.
The liquor industry in Connecticut is a fat target for reducing both consumer prices and litter. But no legislator dares to pop that industry’s balloons.
CLEAN SLATE, DIRTY RESULT: A near-disaster has just inaugurated Connecticut’s ill-conceived “clean slate” law.
The law conceals court records of misdemeanor and lesser felony convictions on the premise that such records prevent people from getting jobs and housing. Of course criminal records don’t help, but people have far more trouble getting jobs and housing because they lack of work skills. In any case the “clean slate” law denies employers and landlords their right to know about the people they may assume responsibility for.
The near-disaster was the plan of the Republican Party in an eastern Connecticut district to nominate for state representative a man who nine years ago was convicted of vandalism for spray-painting Nazi swastikas on buildings and traffic signs. While his conviction was recently removed from court records, some people remembered and called attention to it, so he ended his candidacy.
State law now says people shouldn’t be able to know such things about candidates for public office.
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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 