Brad Magnuson, Chairman

ND Renewable Energy Caucus

Recently, the Environmentally Minded People of Minot Facebook group, we’re working alongside City Council, to lay out a plan to ban plastic grocery bags across the city. Conversations were held with various retailers, and it was reported back to City Council, and suggestions were made on how to implement this plan. For years, cities and towns across this state, had local control on issues, to decide what was best for them. Our State Legislature claimed they were all about local control, but, their actions proved otherwise, when local control was taken away, so that the state would then control the issues.

The only reason this was done, was to protect Republican Legislator Dan Ruby of Minot, and his Circle Sanitation Company. This proved that the “good ‘ole boy” network was still alive, and that they were protecting one of their own.

I firmly believe this was a power grab by Republican Legislators, who seem to think they know what’s best for local communities. They really don’t know what’s best for local communities, nor should they condescend to local communities.

Our local communities need to decide what’s best for the community as a whole, not have Republican Legislators tell them what they can or can’t do. Perhaps there should be a ballot initiative to repeal state control on issues such as this, and revert the control back to local communities, put the power in the hands of the people of the local community.

Banning plastic bags is good for the environment, and prevents bags from winding up in the landfill, on our streets, and everywhere else across the city. Using re-usable grocery bags is a far better idea than using plastic bags.