Editorial

Bottle bullies

Since 1978, state law has required beverage distributors to collect nickel deposits on soda bottles and cans. When consumers return them, they get their nickel back; if they toss them in the trash or otherwise fail to redeem them, they forfeit the nickels to the distributors, who use the money to help pay the considerable costs of "the bottle bill," an unfunded state mandate. Now desperate state "leaders," unwilling to reduce government spending meaningfully in the face of more than $10 billion in deficits arising from their mismanagement and malfeasance, have passed an ex post facto law that robs distributors of the unclaimed nickels retroactive to Dec. 1.

Twelve distributors are challenging the law on constitutional grounds and ought to win. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's arguments that the abandoned deposits belong to consumers (translation: the government) and the $6 million will help pay for "essential public services" barely rise to the level of specious. Consumers voluntarily ceded their rights to the money to the distributors when they didn't redeem their containers. And as the distributors' attorney noted in court last week, the illegal $6 million seizure doesn't amount to "a rounding error" in the context of gigantic deficits. The state's $25 million annual haul from this stickup won't even ping deficits that large. The distributors' losses here, by the way, will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, another $25 million hidden tax on the highest taxed people in America.

This court challenge represents one of those rare occasions when the victims of heavy-handed lawmaking fight back. It doesn't happen more often because plaintiffs are crushed so easily by the weight of the government's financial and personnel resources. Lawmakers and governors know this, which is why they pass unjust laws all the time, and the more times they get away with it, the less compunction about doing it the next time.

We are pleased to see the distributors stand up for their property rights and wish them well. That they won't challenge the deposit-robbery law going forward is understandable, but disappointing because the state never had a part in these transactions and shouldn't be allowed under the color of law to worm its way in now.

http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2009/05/04/opinion/412903.txt