Yes! We don't need any more nuisance taxes like this anywhere in Maryland. "Pro-business vs Pro-Environment"? Phooey! This is pure "Stop raising taxes on the middle and lower classes"!

Chickens. . .

"Council members said the bill would clean roadways and better protect waterways."

Don't we already pay taxes to do this? Or is it that the money that used to pay for that will be used for another pet project and then this "new" tax will get used to pay for the waterways....got it.

If Prince George's County truly wants to claim that it is "open for business", it needs to stop scaring-away the few consumers we have left.

We don't need to impose a bag-tax to clean up the environment. Instead, we need someone to invent plastic-like bags that do not take 400 years to bio-degrade.

This makes no sense. The infrastructure, public safety and social costs of slots and table games (full blown casinos) in Prince George's County is going to have a far more adverse effect on the County.

The nickel fee on plastic bags promotes smart conservation which will result in less trash and, for those who just want to continue with the convenience of plastic bags available at the store, a nickle a bag is hardly a nuisance.

If you go to the grocery store and load up with ten bags, that's $.50. Twenty bags? One dollar. Hell, you can't buy a candy bar for a dollar.

Everybody makes this out to be a huge drain when it would really be a small-ish revenue source for a County that needs it. Instead, we line up to throw our hard earned money away at casinos or slots parlors. That, to me, makes no sense.

Makes no sense to me either. You don't have to pay for bags if you don't want to. Just take your reusable bags to the store. How simple is that? Duh.

Buckeye, you are so, so right. It's a no-brainer to use reusable bags. Of course, people who love their plastic bags probably would consider it an inconvenience to have to remember to take the reusables into the store.

Paying an extra nickel for bags makes no sense at all to me. we are already taxed to the hills as it is. I think the state should learn how to better manage the money that we as tax payers have entrusted them with already. Everything is going up except our paychecks. while to some a nickel may seem like a small amount but to me it's a lot when you have other obligations to take care of. If I go to the grocery store or any store in the county and give them my business; then the least they can do is to give me a bag. Come on leaders of PG county we are watching you and it's almost time to VOTE again--trust me we will remember this! I can't pay the FIVE--NO to the Extra FIVE.

This bill was an attempt to make citizens conscious of the number of plastic bags they take home with them and then must be recycled by municipalities or taken to the landfill. Five cents a bag will not make or break most people, but I would rather have such a "tax" then to pay to have the hundreds of thousands of bags recycled or pay to have them collected from our roadways and rivers by municipal and county employees which again costs us tax dollars.

This is my issue? How often do we complain about trash in the streets? Now your neighborhood might be clean but their are many that drive into "dirty" neighborhoods and dump their trash. There has to be a culture change that all residents respect the environment. This starts at home and should be reinforced at school. The schools are inconsistent and the homes are unstable so we need to do better job as a community uplifting those to understand the importance of this. For the ones that complain about taxes sometimes do little to help or have a viable solution for all but rather focus on self.

Its a shame that the committee killed this bill so that the PG County Council won't have the right to take up the issue. This plastic bag "tax" is 100% voluntary as anyone who brings their reusable bags to the store can avoid paying this fee. We have seen huge positive impacts in the amount of plastic bags used in areas that have implemented this program. Too bad Prince George's County is going to once again fall behind compared to those around us.

“I believe really strongly that this is split evenly between pro-environment and pro-business,” said Councilwoman Mary Lehman (D-Dist. 1) of Laurel in The Gazette.

NO Ms. Lehman is about everyday people like me fed up with politicians like you that want to tax everything.

As a resident of Prince George's County, I'm wondering if our small businesses realize that this bill could have saved them money. They are the only types of businesses who might have difficulty passing the cost of bags on to the consumer.

And whether shoppers realize that they are ALREADY paying for the trashing of our communities as big grocers ALREADY pass the cost of bags on to them.

The only group helped by this defeat for the county was plastic bag manufacturers--why else would would they pay the big bucks to generate these 100s of robo-emails to delegates?

I was against another tax, however I was resigned to it getting passsed since Montgomery County got their bag tax. I have been far more conscious about my use since the discussion came up.

That being said it is a travesty that the State Government took away our county's right to make our own decisions. The people of PG County should be up infuriated by that whether or not they supported the bag tax.

I really wonder how many of those opposed to this bag fee are pausing to understand it. It's not that revenue generated from the fee will be a cash cow. The idea is not to look for more revenue but to change people's behavior concerning the indiscriminate use of wasteful, non-biodegradable plastic bags that have a negative impact on the environment. If you don't want to pay the $.05 then use re-usable grocery bags, plain and simple -- no one is forcing you to buy the bags!

Someone commented that by visiting a grocery store the least they could do is give her a bag. I disagree. The least we all can do is change this disposable mindset that says that we are entitled to free non-biodegradable products. None of this is free, actually. Living a disposable lifestyle just transfers greater costs to society in future years, kind of like living off of credit cards.

This is another ridiculous example of a "tax and spend" state and an uber liberal governor, who wants to be President, doing whatever it can to keep diminishing the income of its citizens.

Instead of a bag tax, it would be a far better idea if the State of Maryland adopted a version of the TRIM amendment from P.G. County and applied it instead to the totality of the state's annual budget.

I have mixed feelings about the bag tax. On one hand, it's a regressive tax. I would prefer a straight-up increase in income tax, with the money earmarked for environmental cleanup.
However, the bag tax really makes people think about how many bags they are using. When I go grocery shopping in PG county, I have to fight the cashier to keep them from using a ridiculous number of plastic bags. Seriously. Go to shoppers - they'll try to use a separate bag for a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a jug of milk, a single frozen pizza, a single 1/2 gallon of ice cream. And, if they're not using 1 bag per item, they are double-bagging EVERYTHING. It's a disgusting waste of resources. It costs the store a lot of money, and gives me more garbage that I have to recycle or throw away at home.
Now that MoCo has passed the bag tax, you can see a huge difference in the behavior of cashiers. For one, they actually ask you if you want a bag. They ask you if you want two bags... They say "are you sure you want two bags?" Gone are the days when everything had it's own plastic bags. Double-bagging is a thing of the past.
As stupid as regressive taxes is, the bag tax does actually change people's behavior, and quickly. It's not like adding taxes to gas or cigarettes. We use too many plastic bags. Anything to reduce the number of bags being used is good.
But honestly - We don't need to be strong-armed by Uncle Sam. Stop using so many plastic bags. Be responsible and conserve bags, bag tax or not.

How about the State of Maryland stop interfering in something as insignificant as to whether we want one plastic bag or two and, instead, do something productive like lower taxes, cut state spending and implement an austerity budget?

Of course a liberal Governor whose sight is set on the White House in 2016 will never consider anything but tax and spend in any ways that he can.

A lot of the comments are how its good that this tax will "teach" people how to use less bags or care more about the environment.

My question is, do we really want the gov to teach people using taxes? Whats next, diapers? Disposable diapers are a huge problem. Maybe we should put an extra tax on that so that people use cloth diapers? Where does it end?

It ends when the 56 percent of us who pay for federal and state government as well as subsidize the 44 percent who pay nothing at all, decided to join the 44 percent and begin taking back from the government instead of paying in to it. The lie of Obama is not the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent but the 56 percent vs. the 44.

We are taxed ENOUGH by: the Federal government, the State of Maryland, P.G. County and Greenbelt.

No new taxes, period! It does not matter what they are called or how they are referred but the time has come to both cut taxes and freeze government spending at every level of it.

I work for a plastic bag company. The irony of the Anti-Bag laws is they are against the environment. We make a windfall in profits from grocery bag bans. Currently everyone reuses 6 gram grocery bags as household trash bags. After a community bans bags, we get to sell the heavier 18 gram trash bags when everyone runs out of the free bags under the kitchen sink. We sell bags by the pound. Trash bags bring higher profits per pound. Ireland banned bags in 2007. Today production is up 400%. Manufacturers in Ireland have hired 300 extra workers and added a shift to production. All scientific Environmental Impact Statements in UK, Scotland, France, Australia, etc. have confirmed the minimum impact method of transporting groceries home is the 6 gram bag. 75 bags per lb. No pollution for production. Paper bags are the worst, contributing to global pollution and deforestation at 7 bags per lb. Reusable bags require virtual slave labor to produce.

People who are railing about the nickel bag fee and calling it a "tax" are misguided. It is a simple way to reduce the amount of trash generated in the county by asking consumers to pay for what they use.
I appreciate the problems of people who say they are financially strapped and don't want to pay more taxes etc. On the other hand when I look at what people are buying at the grocery stores and other stores, i don't see these purchases as reflecting great poverty or deprivation.
The simple fact is that our environment is being trashed in many ways by plastic bags.
Perhaps, if bags are seen as such as terrible imposition upon people's freedom, what we need is stepped up enforcement of littering laws, with fines starting at $100 for the first littlering offense and/or some community service time picking up those wonderful plastic bags so dear to the hearts of freedom loving Americans, that these same patriots have casually tossed from thier vehicles as they ride down the highways..

Once again, the State of Maryland and Gov Spendening Jr. should look for ways to be much more pro-business as well as pro-growth in as many ways as possible rather than think the answer to everything is "tax more and reallocate income."

I'm really surprised that no one from The Patch decided to report on two interesting developments: a) the bag tax died in Committee and b) the MD Senate passed a casino bill adding one more site (Prince George's) to the existing sites and allowing tables games like backjack and roulette.

So, now we'll have all the infrastructure costs as well as the social costs of "gaming" with damn little to show for it (obviously the existing sites haven't been fully developed or the revenue projected realized by the State).

So no conservation, plenty of excess. Yay!

Full casino gaming should have been part of the initial slots package when proposed. It's about time!

This will provide more: good, well-paying and secure jobs at multiple levels of educational and abilities for our county's residents. It cannot be approved, completed and open, fast enough!

Sorry, Joshua. I guess I missed it since it didn't appear in the daily digest that hits my e-mail every morning..

I row on the Anacostia River down in Bladensburg, and I see all the stuff that washes in after every rain. It doesn't bother me if the people who want the convenience of plastic bags pay for their cost. Their full cost. I have to say I haven't figured out a satisfactory replacement for the plastic kitchen trash bag. If I'm not ready to compost. But buying a few reusable shopping bags is really not a hardship.