Headline of the Week
Big Soda Is the New Big Tobacco
East Bay Express, 6/29/2018
Extortion. That’s what people called it—and that’s certainly what it was. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other beverage giants just held California hostage and won…
National
Fizzled Out; How Big Soda uses crafty legislation to defeat taxes on sugary drinks.
Clint Rainey, New York Magazine, NYMAG.com, 7/5/2018
In theory, the tactic could conceivably extend to every other state, says Mark Pertschuk, director of Grassroots Change. Pertschuk fought Big Tobacco in the 80’s, when the combined forces of corporate nicotine titans tried preemption as a means to defeat smoke-free policies in cities. This is “a page right out of their playbook,” he says.
Groups like Pertschuk’s have historically found themselves defending progressives who use local ordinances to shape issues like gun control and minimum wage, especially when policies were at odds with the agendas of state houses. “If California, a progressive state and the biggest in the Union, can’t resist the soda industry’s millions, why would one in the middle of the country say no?” says Pertschuk. “It just shows complete weakness by elected officials regardless of party.”…
Pertschuk says the West Coast focus is intentional. “California did it, they’ll argue,” he says. “Why shouldn’t [other states] pass this, too?” He posits that the American Beverage Association, the organization that lists the biggest soda-makers as members, has been fine-tuning its plan for years. In June of 2017, in fact, Pertschuk published a prescient journal article with Jennifer Pomeranz, a public-health professor at NYU. “State Preemption: A Significant and Quiet Threat to Public Health in the United States” argues that local governments “historically protected the health and safety of their populations more vigorously” than state, or higher-level governments, while sounding the alarm that “multiple industries are working on a 50-state strategy to enact state laws preempting local regulation.” [Emphasis added]
State vs. city government: A relationship at an ‘all-time low’?
Smart Cities Dive, 7/2/2018
At a Washington, DC event in May, Harvard Kennedy School professor and former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith argued cities are “almost at war with their statehouse,” and that “cooperation between cities and their states is at an all-time low.”
The differences between city government and their counterparts in state houses have been well-documented, with many blaming ideological differences between traditionally conservative state legislators and more liberal city leaders. Others have said the divide between rural and urban legislators creates rancor in state houses.
But is the relationship at an all-time low? Goldsmith did not respond to repeated requests for further comment, but Mark Pertschuk, director at Grassroots Change, an organization that looks to empower grassroots movements and tracks states’ preemption of local control, believes it is…
“I don’t think that the Founding Fathers, it could have ever occurred to them that some idiot in the Arizona legislature or in the legislature in Texas would wholesale challenge local democracy,” Pertschuk said.
In other states, cities have felt under attack from state legislators and that their power has been eroded. Pertschuk said the most egregious example of this is in Arizona, where he said the legislature is “… at war with all the subdivisions of the state, not just cities and counties but primarily cities and counties.”…
Pertschuk said it has been a similar story in Texas, where he said Gov. Greg Abbott has been “quite honest and transparent” about wanting to simply eliminate all local authority. The city of Denton, TX became the first in the state to ban fracking inside its city limits after a 2014 vote by its residents, but almost immediately the state legislature passed a bill preempting the authority of municipalities to regulate various energy development activities, which included fracking.
Given Texas’ diversity and strong history of local control, Pertschuk said it was a surprising development, especially when coupled with Abbott’s apparent desire to undermine cities’ ability to self-govern. “They’re going against a tradition that goes back to the very founding of the state,” Pertschuk said. Laredo, TX was in the Texas Supreme Court this week battling the state — and losing — over a plastic bag ban.
Why has state preemption happened?
For Pertschuk, this trend of state preemption of cities goes back to one thing — campaign contributions…
Since then, the focus has shifted to state legislators, which Pertschuk called a “systematic and successful effort to purchase,” and a desire to give to anyone who will take their money regardless of party affiliation. Those companies then are “calling in the chips” and “cashing in on their financial investment in the state legislatures,” making sure that laws that will negatively affect them do not pass.
“The people that are making minimum wage in Wisconsin can’t make hundreds of thousands of dollars of political contributions, whereas [the American Legislative Exchange Council] and the Chamber of Commerce, the NRA and Pepsi and Coke and the huge wholesalers of soda can together fund an entire state Senate campaign,” Pertschuk said.
Food and Nutrition
Drinking Games; In California, a pre-emptive strike in the soda tax battle may have lit a bigger fuse.
U.S. News & World Report, 7/5/2018
ESCALATING ITS WAR WITH the public health community, Big Soda dropped the big one in California last week, successfully pushing the state government to ban localities from passing new taxes on soft drinks and other sugary beverages for the next 12 years…
“The tactic that Big Soda is using right now is not a new one,” says Jim Krieger, a physician, University of Washington public health professor and executive director of the advocacy group Healthy Food America. He says pre-emption – convincing lawmakers to set the larger law of the land, effectively big-footing localities and perhaps protecting an industry by doing so – “is one that’s been used by Big Tobacco for several years.”..
“Pre-emption is a particularly dangerous and pernicious strategy,” Krieger says. “It deprives local officials and local communities from doing what’s best in their eyes. It subverts local democracy. It’s also dangerous because it’s effective…”
California just banned soda tax — it should set off alarm bells everywhere
The Hill, 7/1/2018
At the California State Capitol last Thursday, teenage health advocates from Stockton urged lawmakers to stand with communities like theirs and put people’s health over corporate profits. After more than a year of knocking on doors, talking with people at farmers markets, and attending community events to build support for a soda tax in their city, these young activists were up against an unexpected challenge — a state law that would render their efforts meaningless by banning cities from adopting soda taxes until 2030.
These young people talked emotionally about how chronic health problems affect their families in a city where 36 percent of youth suffer from diabetes or pre-diabetes — and shared how the beverage industry misleads consumers about the safety of their products.
As the youth spoke out against the bill, the other side was conspicuously quiet. That’s because the American Beverage Association — representing the soda industry — wasn’t even in the room. It didn’t need to be — its fingerprints were already all over the legislation that ended up being signed by Gov. Jerry Brown later in the day…
Big Soda, like the tobacco industry before it, knows that the public is turning against them, demanding accountability for the health harms sugary drinks cause. In California, four cities passed local soda taxes in the last four years. The beverage industry poured tens of millions of dollars trying to drown soda tax initiatives in California — and it’s been failing.
Preliminary research shows that soda taxes are reducing consumption of unhealthy beverages and increasing consumption of water. Additionally, soda tax revenues are being invested in school gardens, after-school physical activity programs, and public education campaigns.
Firearms
‘We don’t have to accept the carnage’: Towns take a stand on gun control
NBC News, 7/2/2018
To keep towns in line, many states have passed laws to curtail local control on specific issues. These “pre-emption” laws, often pushed by industry groups, have prevented municipalities from challenging state decisions on a range of issues, from fracking bans to “sanctuary city” policies to the expansions of LGBTQ rights.
State attempts to curb gun laws date to the 1990’s, when the National Rifle Association modeled a nationwide campaign for pre-emption laws on a successful effort by the tobacco industry to rein in local smoking rules a decade earlier, according to a study by Lori Riverstone-Newell, a political science professor at Illinois State University.
Payday Lending
Leave payday loan regulations to states, attorneys general say
The Daily Sentinel, 7/2/2018
Republican Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman and her Democratic counterpart in Massachusetts, Maura Healey, are leading a bipartisan effort of state attorneys general urging Congress not to pass two proposed bills that could impact how states limit interest rates on payday loans.
The 20 attorneys general said in a letter to U.S. Senate leaders last week that two bills they are considering — HR3299, Protecting Consumers’ Access of Credit Act of 2017, and HR4439, Modernizing Credit Opportunities Act — would allow non-bank lenders to sidestep state usury laws.
The two measures would allow payday lenders to charge excessive interest rates that would otherwise be illegal under state law, Coffman said.
State Attorneys General Rightly Urge Defeat of Congressional Bills That Would Preempt State Consumer Protections
Center for Responsible Lending, 6/29/2018
Smoke-free
AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY CANCER ACTION NETWORK: State Bills Limiting Local Authority Could Threaten Future Public Health Policies
Patient Daily, 7/4/2018
“Local lawmakers play a critical role in passing and implementing proven policies to prevent and reduce cancer diagnoses and deaths in their communities. Local ordinances can often be more innovative and tailored to community needs. Recent action in several states across the country to strip local lawmakers of that role could put future progress in the fight against cancer at risk.
“While preemption has been a strategy of Big Tobacco for years, recent successes around proven tobacco control policies like smoke-free laws and tobacco tax increases, along with other public health policy wins like taxing unhealthy, sugary drinks, have amplified industry efforts to create barriers to passing these laws at the local level…
ACS CAN will continue to monitor this activity across the country to protect public health innovation and its impact on reducing suffering and death from cancer.”
How Big Soda Strong-Armed California Into Banning Soda Taxes
Mother Jones, 7/6/2018
Back in November 2016, the soda industry got iced at the ballot box in California. Voters in three Bay Area municipalities—San Francisco, Oakland, and Albany—passed hefty taxes on sugary drinks. In doing so, they joined Berkeley, which had approved a similar measure two years before. The sugary drinks industry burned nearly $25 million campaigning against the 2016 measures, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Last week, Big Soda got its revenge. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill prohibiting counties and cities from enacting any new taxes on grocery items—including sugary beverages—until January 1, 2031…
CDA, CMA, file statewide soda tax measure for 2020
California Dental Association, 7/2/2018
A ballot measure to protect public health through a state soda tax was filed today for the November 2020 ballot by CDA and the California Medical Association.
The filing comes four days after the multibillion-dollar soda industry proposed a ballot measure that jeopardized the fiscal outlook of local governments, forcing the state to pre-empt local authority and pass an unprecedented 12-year moratorium on any local soda tax.
State and Big Soda Nix Santa Cruz’s Sugary Drink Tax
Good Times, 7/3/2018
California bows to beverage industry, blocks soda taxes
NBC News, 6/29/2018
California Shields Big Soda From Local Taxes
The Wall Street Journal, 6/29/2018
Opinion
Letter: How the soda industry in subverting our democratic process
The Mercury News, 7/5/2018
Local representation is precisely what was bartered away to boost a private industry’s profits.
Residents’ ability to pass laws in their cities and counties to protect their health is one of their most powerful tools. Soda companies demanded that power be given over to them as a ransom payment for a ballot initiative they themselves designed to be so broad that it would have decimated basic services for town and cities.
Big Soda Is the New Big Tobacco
East Bay Express, 6/29/2018
Extortion. That’s what people called it—and that’s certainly what it was. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other beverage giants just held California hostage and won…
Preemption policies, like the one just pushed by the American Beverage Association and signed by Governor Brown on Thursday, are a time-tested corporate strategy to make a run-around democracy, prioritizing profits over people’s health. Big Tobacco has used them, so has the gun lobby. With millions of people’s lives impacted around the country by diabetes, heart disease, and other illnesses linked to sugary drink consumption, it’s time we see Big Soda as we have come to see Big Tobacco: As a major threat to public health and—as we saw this week in California—to democracy as well.
Plastic pollution in Tampa Bay is bigger than straws. Here’s what local advocates are doing
Tampa Bay Times, 7/6/2018
Around the world, a growing number of cities and countries are banning straws, bags and other single-use plastic products, which never degrade and are polluting the environment in alarming quantities: An estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic waste ends up in the oceans every year. But Florida has not made it easy for local governments to crack down — a 2008 law prohibits cities from banning plastic bags and containers, and a 2016 law blocks bans on plastic foam.
Attempt at transgender bathroom ballot initiative falls short in Montana
The Hill, 7/2/2018
An effort to let Montana voters decide whether to prohibit transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice has fallen short, according to The Associated Press.
The measure’s proponents gathered fewer than 10,000 signatures — far below the 25,000 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot, the AP reported on June 30.
Note: State laws directed at undermining civil rights protections for LGBTQ people typically preempt local nondiscrimination policies adopted by schools, municipalities, and other subdivisions of the state.
Governor Cooper vetoes North Carolina Farm Act
AG Daily, 6/27/2018
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has vetoed the North Carolina Farm Act — a bill that would have limited how and when neighbors of hog farms can sue with nuisance claims.
Gov. Cooper shared the following statement on his veto of Senate Bill 717.
“While agriculture is vital to North Carolina’s economy, so property rights are vital to people’s homes and other businesses. North Carolina’s nuisance laws can help allow generations of families to enjoy their homes and land without fear for their health and safety. Those same laws stopped the Tennessee Valley Authority from pumping air pollution into our mountains,” Cooper said. “Our laws must balance the needs of businesses versus property rights. Giving one industry special treatment at the expense of its neighbors is unfair.”
Westerville bans smoking in public parks
The Columbus Dispatch, 7/3/2018
The Westerville City Council agreed to ban smoking in the suburb’s public parks Monday night, joining Columbus and a growing number of surrounding cities…
Several communities across Ohio have already increased their tobacco-buying age from 18 to 21, including Columbus and seven of its suburbs. But Westerville Law Director Bruce Bailey said that because there’s an existing state law on the matter, that likely pre-empts local law, meaning such rules could be challenged in court.
Court denies temporary injunction in Austin’s paid sick leave ordinance
KVUE ABC, 6/26/2018
A Travis County court judge on Tuesday denied the temporary injunction in Austin’s paid sick leave ordinance, according to a representative from the 353rd Civil District Court…
The injunction, filed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the National Federation of Independent Business, would have halted Austin’s current paid sick time ordinance.
Opinion
Editorial: If Texas won’t give sick leave, at least let Austin do it
The Austin American-Statesman, 7/6/2018
I-1634 backers warn soda tax could spread to food
The Spokesman-Review, 7/10/2018
While no city or county has discussed a tax on any grocery item other than soda or sugary drinks, campaign organizers said they want to make sure that conversation doesn’t start. The initiative is focused on local government and wouldn’t prevent the state from imposing a tax on soda or groceries.
Although the Yes campaign for I-1634 says it represents a broad coalition from across the state that includes labor, small business and farm groups, more than 98 percent of the $4.76 million it has raised has come from three major soda manufacturers – Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Dr Pepper. The Washington Food Industry Association has chipped in $20,000. [Emphasis added]
Initiative to stop soda, grocery tax gets big support, likely to make Nov ballot
My Northwest, 7/6/2018
Campaign delivers signature petitions to bar new soft-drink and food taxes in Washington
The Seattle Times, 7/5/2018
An initiative campaign funded primarily by soft-drink companies seeking to block local governments from enacting new taxes on soft drinks and food handed in its signatures Thursday for the November election ballot…
The initiative campaign was formed in late February, two months after Seattle’s 1.75-cents-per-ounce tax on beverages like soda and energy and sports drinks went into effect…
But nearly all of the campaign’s $4.8 million in donations has come from four companies, state campaign-finance records show.
Those companies are Coca-Cola, $2.3 million; PepsiCo, $1.7 million; Dr Pepper-Snapple Group, $709,000; and Red Bull North America, $55,000.
