Colorado House committee kills proposed plastic bag tax

A bill to implement a tax on plastic shopping bags in Colorado was once again defeated in the Colorado legislature.

House Bill 18-1054 would have placed a 25-cent tax on plastic bags at larger retailers in an effort to subsidize affordable housing.

But the bill was killed by the House Local Government Committee because it would have cost more money and would have disproportionally affected low-income Coloradans, according to a news release from the House Republican Communications Office.

Republican and Democrat members of the committee voted against the bill, which failed by a vote of 11-2.

“Not only would this bill have been far more harmful to low-income Coloradans, it actually would have cost the state over $1.2 million dollars just to implement this new government program,” said Rep. Kim Ransom of Douglas County.

A statewide effort to pass a plastic bag tax in 2009 also failed to pass.