Final week the Northern California seashore city of Santa Cruz enacted a tax on sodas, ice teas and different drinks with added sugar. Voters authorized the 2-cent-per-ounce tax in November, regardless of the beverage trade pouring at the least $1.2 million in opposition.
Apart from producing an estimated $1.3 million for the town, the tax goals to curb the overconsumption of sugary drinks, which analysis has proven to work. Consuming too many sugary drinks can result in coronary heart illness and Kind 2 diabetes, stated Blythe Younger, a lobbyist for the American Coronary heart Affiliation, a key proponent of the tax.
- Younger: “The average American consumes a bathtub full of sugar from sugary drinks annually, or 30 gallons.”
However the tax additionally exists in defiance of state regulation — form of.
Let’s again up: In 2018 California lawmakers brokered a deal with the beverage trade to preemptively ban native governments from implementing native grocery taxes till 2030.
That regulation included a provision requiring the state to withhold native gross sales tax income from any metropolis imposing its personal new grocery tax, even when a court docket decided that the tax “is a valid exercise of a city’s authority.”
Constitution cities — which beneath California’s structure are granted extra flexibility from some state legal guidelines — took that half personally. Particularly Santa Cruz, on the time poised to place a soda tax proposal earlier than voters, which it then needed to scrap.
However, in 2023 a state appeals court docket dominated that the withholding income a part of the regulation was unconstitutionalgiving Santa Cruz’s metropolis council the inexperienced mild to maneuver ahead with a soda tax. So, the regulation towards cities enacting their very own grocery tax remains to be in impact, however the regulation has no tooth (maybe acceptable for a regulation successfully defending sugar consumption).
In a press release to CalMatters, the American Beverage Affiliation stated it’s assessing subsequent steps, decrying Santa Cruz’s tax as unlawful and an “unfair burden on working families struggling with record-high prices.”
A authorized dispute would function one more occasion of a metropolis making an attempt to carve out extra autonomy. Cities have not too long ago fought to enact their very own housing insurance policies, election guidelines and guide bans. However as a substitute of coming to blows with the state (or the federal authorities at instances), Santa Cruz could be going through a multibillion-dollar trade.
- Shebreh Kalantari-JohnsonVice Mayor of Santa Cruz: “We’re ready for that. … It does not have to be the case where people with money or special interests can dictate how a city, county or state makes decisions. It should not be.”
