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Audacity of Truth
The war on bottled water begins in Chicago
Live in Chi-town? Better buy your bottled water before midnight, or you’ll be paying more for it next year (h/t: ST reader JM):
Chicago’s impending bottled water tax has thrown the city into an uproar. A group of politicians, including Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., staged their own version of the Boston Tea Party, by pouring bottled water into the Chicago River. The Illinois Retail Merchants Association, the Illinois Food Retailers Association, and other groups are threatening to challenge the law in Cook County Circuit Court after it goes into effect in the New Year. Retailers on the city’s borders are stocking up on water in expectation of higher sales.
The law is a pet project of Alderman George Cardenas. It’s intended to raise revenue (about $10.5 million annually, by city estimates), to discourage the use of environmentally harmful plastic bottles, and also to address Cardenas’s ridiculous obsession.
The Alderman blames the city water and sewer department’s $40 million budget shortfall on bottled water consumption, an allegation that — pardon the pun — doesn’t hold water.
The 2007 water rates for Chicago and its suburbs is $1.33 per 1,000 gallons consumed; sewer rates are calculated at 83 percent of the water bill, or $1.10 per 1,000 gallons consumed. Chicago consumers would need to consume an additional 16 billion gallons of tap water a year to make up the budget shortfall — enough to fill almost 25,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
As for the revenue estimates, they are also likely all wet. While politicians recognize that raising the cost of bottled water will discourage people from buying it, they anticipate a continuous, if not expanding, revenue base from bottled water sales in future years.
Thanks to existing loopholes, the bottled water tax won’t collect a fraction of the money that the city expects. Under the new law, Chicagoans would be charged 5 cents per bottle of still water, but nothing for carbonated or fortified water, which are considered soft drinks and thus not direct competitors of Lake Michigan’s finest.
The state of Illinois’ Retailers’ Occupation Tax Act states that “’soft drinks’ means any complete, finished, ready-to-use, non-alcoholic drink, whether carbonated or not, including but not limited to soda water, cola, fruit juice, vegetable juice, carbonated water, and all other preparations commonly known as soft drinks of whatever kind or description that are contained in any closed or sealed bottle, can, carton, or container, regardless of size.”
Coffee, tea, still water, infant formula, milk or milk products and drinks containing 50 percent or more natural fruit or vegetable juice are exceptions. (Isn’t this beginning to sound like something out of Dr. Strangelove?)
CBS 2 Chicago reports that a lawsuit is underway:
But several organizations are out to invalidate the new tax, which was approved in November as part of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s $275 million city budget.
The Illinois Beverage Association is among the groups that plans to file a lawsuit to invalidate the tax. The organization argues that the tax will “disproportionately hurt low- and fixed-income families, who spend a greater percentage of their income on food and drinks. This includes senior citizens.”
The group said it plans to file the lawsuit in early January, along with several other trade groups.
Tim Bramlet of the Beverage Association said the plan for the lawsuit comes after a failed attempt to argue against the tax before the City Council.
“We had tried to argue with the City Council during the debate of the issue that the whole idea of the tax was misguided, and we suggested there were some legal ground that the tax went through, so we’re prepared to file through on behalf of Chicago consumers and retailers, and see if we can’t get it struck down.”
[...]
Ald. George Cardenas (12th) first proposed the bottled water tax in August. He said the decline in water usage had contributed to a nearly $40 million shortfall in the city’s water and sewer funds.
Cardenas also said in August that a bottled water tax would help the environment by dissuading people from buying the plastic bottles that end up in landfills.
Ah, ya gotta love the “it’ll help others” excuse city “leaders” always given when it comes time to dream up ways to collect more money from the people.
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14 Responses to “The war on bottled water begins in Chicago”
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Go figure.
At the federal level democrat politicians promise to tax the rich in order to help the middle class and poor.
At the local level democrat politicians tax the hell out of the middle class and poor by constantly raising taxes on fuel, tobacco, alcohol and then generate even more income through “the people’s vices” such as lotteries and casinos gambling.
Democrat Proverb: The big type giveth and the small print taketh away.
Democrats love bashing “the rich,” yet they get huge donations form them constantly. Likewise, they pretend to be going after the rich to appeal to middle class voters (at least consumed by envy and signed on for class warfare) yet the tax burden always ends up on the middle clasee, because that’s where the money is.
Face it, the rich are already bearing more than their fair share of taxes, and there’s not much left to squeeze out of them. The only readily available sources of taxation is the hapless middle class.
And of course here we have another favorite Democratic stance, imposing taxes “for the common good,” as Hillary was careless enough to say once. If you’re not going to make the correct decisions on your own, your betters in government will take your money under threat of force and make you do whatever it is they consider the right things. And it won’t help if you do them without the confiscatory and punitive taxes, because they’ll tax you anyway for something else, or just because they can.
Tax money is like cocaine for Dems.
These are the same people who brought you “NO Wal-Mart within the Chicago City Limits”. So what did Wal-Mart do??? Well they figured out the more blighted neighborhoods along Chicago’s borders and opened up stores in the nearest suburb, shorting Chicago and Cook County all of the local sales tax monies.
These are the same people who made Chicago smoke free, when all of the smokers started hanging out at the bars and resturants in the suburb, and businesses started to fold, what did they do?? They petitioned the Illinois State Legislature to make the whole state Smoke Free, for the children don’t cha know, and now all the smokers are going to go to the border states of Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky to eat and drink. In Illinois 75 percent of the population lives within an hour of another state, none of which are smoke free states.
Yep some real geniuses up there in Chicago. Any wonder they run budget shortfalls?? It is their own asnine policies that are killing funding of thier budget. – Lorica
Florida Power pushed and pushed for the customers to reduce energy usage. They succeeded. Then they complained to the PUC that their profits and revenues had fallen. Astonishing! So they demanded a rate increase! Sounds O’ so familiar, doesn’t it?
Is this a great country, or what?
I imagine the law will be invalidated by the courts.
As for me, New York City tap water is less filling, AND it tastes great. And there’s a deposit tax only on carbonated products–not still water or fruit juices in plastic containers.
The Democrats are the rich; of course they have to tax the poor, how else did they get rich?
I remember when Florida Power pulled that crap benning. I also remember Disney sucking up all the state low interest bond/loan money that was intended to let first time home buyers get a house during the hyper inflation era of Carter to improve the Reedy Creek Wastewater Management District, that is, to improve the sewage plant that handled only Disney stuff. Bastages.
The latest is that the state has given all sorts of preferential treatment and tax bennies to companies that bottle spring water here and ship it out of state (which is related to the bottled water post above). Great, the state has a looming water crisis and we are paying companies to take the water out of state and profit by doing so.
Gotta love Florida politicians, they can be bought for the price of a season pass to Mauswitz.
I assume that’s a typo?
Yep, and now corrected
ST headlines:
Not quite. Like most asinine ideas, it was adopted a few months ago by the Philadelphia area moonbats, who always make a strong case that they can jump on harebrained idea faster than anyone else.
On the Biggest Loser, they were touting the fact that they went to the Brita water bottles instead of the disposable ones they used before.
GWR wrote:
Oops – I didn’t mean to suggest that Chicago was first in the nation to start the war on bottled water, just that Chicago was now waging their own war on bottled water. My bad. I should have written my headline a little better.
I anticipate Charlotte, NC to join Philly and Chicago on this at some point.
Ah…got it, ST. Now I understand. Thanks!
Well at least they have a lot of bottled water on hand to prevent another giant fire………….