Published: March 01, 2008 11:14 pm         

‘Bottle bill’ put back on shelf for now

CHARLESTON — Once again, the Legislature has set adrift the perennial “bottle bill” in the sea of forgotten legislation, marking the sixth year it has failed to come ashore in either chamber.

Neither bill in the House of Delegates or Senate ever reached the agenda of a committee, but its chief promoter, the West Virginia-Citizen Action Group, isn’t discouraged.

“Lucky seven” is how the group’s program director, Linda Frame, views the anticipated renewal of the bill in the 2009 session.

In advance of the seventh effort, Frame hopes lawmakers will give the issue plenty of study time in this year’s monthly interims meetings.

“We’re hoping to come out with a really good study resolution going into the interims session,” she said.

“We knew going in it was going to be a long-haul battle, and that’s OK. We’re going to have a really good bill when it all comes down at the end.”

In what has been a mild session, with little controversy during an election year, the measure was assigned little priority.

“We think that legislators are being cautious about this bill,” Frame said.

“I think they’ve gotten some misinformation from the other side, so they’re moving very slowly on this.”

The idea is to impose a refundable, 10-cent deposit on beverage containers and encourage consumers to turn them to get their money back, either at the stores of purchase or at recycling centers.

WV-CAG and other proponents feel this would lessen the amount of bottles strewn along West Virginia’s highways since there would be the incentive to get the 10 cents back on soft drinks, beer cans and the like.

Opponents dismiss the bill as just another tax and contend it would open the door wide to fraud with folks hauling in containers from other states to collect a deposit that was never paid in West Virginia.

Fraud is a matter that even proponents acknowledge, but in a joint assembly of committees in this session, John Ferrari of a leading recycling firm, NexCycle, said fraud isn’t a major problem.

“It’s not as prevalent as everybody insists it is.”

In California, he told lawmakers, where his firm has a major stake in recycling, officials perform admirably in keeping fraud down.

But one leading critic, Greg Sayre, director of the Independent Professional Recyclers Association, thinks Ferrari inadvertently served the opposition when he told lawmakers that recyclers simply would need to impose the tax on other types of containers once the program runs empty as a large percentage of consumers cash in bottles.

Frame feels Ferrari scored some big points with her side of the controversy, particularly with his revelation that NexCycle might be interested in setting up a center here if West Virginia lawmakers get around to passing the bill.

“That could bring in 300 new jobs,” Frame says of the legislation.

In the joint committee, Frame noted, it marked the first time WV-CAG managed such a large audience with lawmakers. About 40 heard Ferrari cover the positive aspects of “bottle bill” legislation.

“We think having the California gentleman come in, and in doing some of the other education, we’ve gotten some of their fears calmed a bit,” she said.

“And we’ve got some really open minds in the House. I think they’re going to take a good look at it.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com