Immigrant-owned small businesses and their customers have experienced outsized struggles as a result of the ongoing pandemic, bearing a disproportionate impact of its physical and economic fallout.
Across New York City’s five boroughs, more than 13,000 bodegas operate as a frontline resource. We provide convenient and affordable staples for New Yorkers — particularly in minority communities that are so-called “food deserts” with little-to-no access to large supermarkets.
These same communities, which have long suffered from systematic disinvestment in health care, education and other critical services, are now bracing for funding cuts by Albany to the very programs on which we and our customers depend.
This comes as bodegas are grappling with how to comply with the broken and unworkable plastic bag ban — an unfunded mandate pushing additional costs onto our customers at a time when they can least afford to pay. The Cuomo administration itself has acknowledged the ban in its current form is not sustainable, proposing changes to it in the governor’s executive budget — a clear attempt to move past expensive litigation that delayed implementation of the broken law.
Sadly, these tweaks fail to address the issues at the heart of this failed policy.
Bodega owner Francisco Marte, left, assists a customer with her purchase, Wednesday, Feb. 10, in the Bronx borough of New York. Marte heads up the Bodega and Small Business Group, which represents bodegas in New York. Francisco Marte, president of the Bodega and Small Business Association of New York, said said he has been lobbying local officials to set aside appointments for bodega workers, many of whom are unaware they are eligible.
Many of our members face an impossible choice. They must either attempt to acquire alternative bags at prices neither they nor their customers can afford or, worse yet, offer no bags at all. The state should replace this bad law with an across-the-board fee on all bags — both paper and plastic — simultaneously boosting small businesses and generating much-needed new revenue for the state, potentially up to $500 million annually.
This approach might actually better serve the sustainability goals that motivated the ban’s initial passage. Research conducted by New York University, as well as the experiences of other states and municipalities, has shown that bag fees are more effective than outright bans at influencing consumer behavior, while also allowing retailers time to adapt.
This method has also been tested — and proven effective — at the local level right here in New York. One year after Suffolk County’s 2018 implementation of a five-cent fee on both paper and plastic, a report found that 1.1 billion fewer plastic bags had been used compared to 2017. There was also a roughly 42% decrease in the number of plastic bags found along local shorelines.
Unlike other revenue-generating proposals under consideration in Albany, a fee on plastic and paper bags would start delivering funds to the cash-strapped state almost immediately upon implementation. Conversely, both adult-use cannabis and mobile sports betting require complex regulatory structures that will take years to establish before generating either revenue or jobs.
As the governor has often said, small businesses are the backbone of New York’s economy. Across the U.S., small business owners have been given breathing room during the pandemic by states and localities that lifted bag bans, allow them to continue offering products that help keep both customers and workers safe.
Bodega owners and their employees, most of whom are lower-income people of color who did not know their current jobs would put them on the front lines of battling a deadly virus, deserve all the help we can give them. Replacing the bag ban with a minimal across-the-board fee is a small step in the right direction and will demonstrate that the state does indeed have the best interest of these struggling small businesses at heart.
This change also has the benefit of creating a significant and readily available new revenue stream at a time when the state needs it most. This funding could be used to offset devastating cuts to important programs and services that will be critical in helping New York recover from the pandemic and emerge stronger than ever before.
Overall, replacing New York’s unworkable bag ban with a reasonable bag fee represents a clear win all around: a win for the environment, a win for the minority communities our small businesses serve, and a win for New York State. Marte is secretary-treasurer of the Bodega and Small Business Group.