A6 The Region The Boston Globe TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2019
mental group that has been
pushing for a statewide
ban. The revised bill that came
out of committee, he said, “is a
slap in the face.”
While the current version of
the bill outlaws the use of thin,
plastic-film carryout bags com-
monly found at checkout, its
detractors say a loophole would
let retailers offer thicker-weight
plastic bags to customers. The
revised bill also does not re-
quire retailers to charge a fee
for paper bags. Those fees help
retailers cover the cost of paper
bags, which typically are more
expensive than plastic, advo-
cates say, and they motivate
consumers to switch to reus-
able bags.
“The idea is to cut back on
all single-use bags,” said John
Hite, a policy analyst with the
Conservation Law Foundation.
“When a fee is placed on paper,
studies have shown that single-
use paper use drops.”
Some bag opponents fear
that the bill’s current version —
which includes a so-called pre-
emption clause — would effec-
tively undo the tougher ordi-
nances already in place in some
Massachusetts communities,
several of which have mandato-
ry fees or stronger restrictions
on bag thickness. In Boston
and Cambridge, for instance,
retailers must charge shoppers
a 5- or 10-cent fee, respectively,
when they choose to use a pa-
per bag. Those fees would no
longer be mandatory if the bill
passes as written.
Janet Domenitz, executive
director of MassPIRG, said con-
cerns about the environmental
impact of plastic bags have in-
spired lawmakers in New York,
Vermont, Connecticut, and
Maine to all pass statewide bag
bans in recent months. Similar
restrictions now exist in 122 cit-
ies and towns in Massachusetts,
and she said she spent “hun-
dreds of hours” working with
local business groups on the
terms for a statewide bag ban.
She said her jaw dropped
when she saw the committee’s
revisions to the bill.
“One hundred and twenty
cities and towns have gone
ahead and done this on their
own,” she said. “Why can’t the
Legislature catch up?”
Brian Houghton, govern-
ment affairs coordinator with
the Massachusetts Food Associ-
ation, which represents grocery
stores statewide, agreed. “Our
members are going crazy as
they sort out how to comply”
with the various bag bans
throughout the region, he said.
Statewide legislation, he said, is
uBAG BAN
Continued from Page A
needed quickly.
But proponents of the ban-
the-bag efforts have been coun-
tered by pressure from the pa-
per and plastic bag industry.
Fara Klein, manager of govern-
ment affairs for the American
Forest & Paper Association,
said fees on paper bags increase
costs for consumers and “dis-
courage the use of products
that are recyclable, com-
postable, made of recycled ma-
terial, and reusable,” she wrote
in an e-mail. “[P]aper is not
part of the problem that com-
munities are trying to solve.”
And the American Progres-
sive Bag Alliance has its own
“bag the ban” campaign, paying
$60,000 in lobbying fees to
Northwind Strategies last year,
according to state filings. Its ex-
ecutive director, Matt Sea-
holm, points to research out of
the University of Sydney which
has shown that after bag bans
go into effect, there’s often a
spike in the sale of plastic gar-
bage and dog waste bags. The
organization also argues that
the resources used to create pa-
per bags have a larger ecologi-
cal impact than plastic bags.
And reusable bags have their
impact as well: On its website,
the organization cites UK Envi-
ronmental Agency research
that found that cotton or canvas
bags need to be used 131 times
to account for the carbon out-
put required to create them.
Alexis Bateman, director
of MIT’s Responsible Supply
Chain Lab, said consumers
have a hard time weighing all of
these various factors. But shesaid plastic bag bans are im-
portant because they decrease
the total amount of plastic in
our ecosystem and help shift
long-term consumer habits
away from single-use items,
“even if at this point we’re see-
ing a number of unintended
consequences.”
Ehrlich said she was disap-
pointed by the revisions to the
bill, particularly as she’s
watched bag bans pass in
neighboring states. “Our local
communities have sent a really
strong message that they want
something done about this,” she
said. “They’re coming from
places where people are actual-
ly pulling plastic bags out of
clogged sewer grates or going to
beach cleanups or just seeing
the impact that it’s having on
marine life.”
Eldridge sits on the envi-
ronment committee and voted
against the bill’s revisions. “The
challenge has always been that
there are some legislators that
see the 10-cent bag fee as a tax
and it would somehow be a fi-
nancial burden, and I strongly
disagree with that,” he said.
And with the preemption
clause, he said, “You’re literally
telling a Boston or another city
that instituted a fee that now
they’re going to move back-
wards.”
Both lawmakers said they
would push the committee to
consider revisions to the bill.
Representative Smitty Pig-
natelli, who chairs the commit-
tee, said he “respectfully dis-
agrees” with the concerns of his
colleagues and the antibag con-stituent groups who now op-
pose the bill. The legislation, he
said, creates “consistency
throughout the Commonwealth
and a level playing field” for re-
tailers, who he pointed out, can
still choose to implement bag
fees on their own. And the law
empowers the Department of
Environmental Protection to
establish rules and guidelines
for restrictions going forward.
“If you can show me one
community who has a better
bill than what we put out, I’ll
change my mind,” he said.
In the absence of statewide
legislation, some businesses
have been implementing bag
bans of their own. The chain of
Pride convenience stores in
Western Massachusetts and
Connecticut revealed plans to
end plastic bag use in April, and
Stop & Shop removed plastic
from its stores in Connecticut
earlier this month.
And as of Aug. 1, the Spring-
field-based chain of 70 Big Y
grocery stores phased out its
use of plastic shopping bags in
Massachusetts and Connecti-
cut.
“It’s a great opportunity to
get out in front of it and do it on
our own, because it’s the right
thing to do,” said Raanan Hart-
man, who has led the company-
wide effort.
On the first day of the ban,
shoppers in the Norwood store
seemed to take the switch in
stride.
“It creates an incentive for
people to be more conscien-
tious,” said Carol Cardoni after
she loaded her reusable grocery
bags in her trunk. “You get used
to it.”Janelle Nanos can be reached
at [email protected].
Follow her on
Twitter @janellenanos.hoping on a subconscious level
that if they just take the right
clothes they’ll be able to better
deal with difficult family mem-
bers.
“If you can talk through
these issues in therapy,” she
said, “the packing is less of an
issue.”
Even those without clinical
packing problems face chal-
lenges because, whether or not
we wish to believe it, some part
of us is defined by the things
we carry.
“All choices involve closing
doors, foreclosing on a vision,”
said memoirist Kelly Corrigan,
the author of “Tell Me More.”
“A trip is nothing but poten-
tial,” she said, “but then you
start putting clothes in a suit-
case. If you don’t bring a rain-
coat you are not going to go out
if it rains. If you don’t bring a
bathing suit, you are not going
to swim in the hotel pool. You
are making decisions before
you even get on the plane
about what’s possible for this
trip.
“Packing forecloses on
spontaneity,” she added (unless
you want to spend your whole
trip shopping). “If you get
uPACKING
Continued from Page A
there and you find out you can
get opera tickets for $12 in the
balcony but you don’t have a
dress to wear.... ”
But many people bring
items almost intending not to
use them. They’re given valu-
able space in the suitcase so
the packer doesn’t have to face
certain truths, such as: I am
not going to exercise on vaca-
tion.
“I always bring workout
clothes as if I’m going to go to
the gym,” said Jennifer Goe-
maere, a patient experience
representative at Boston Chil-
dren’s Hospital.
She routinely packs leg-
gings and a sports bra and
then, upon her return, puts
them back in her closet, un-
worn. The only way to ensure
that she would work out, Goe-
maere said, is to leave her gear
at home. “Then I’d want to ex-
ercise.”
AnaMaria Musterer’s varia-
tion on the theme involves fan-
cy clothes. When she’s packing,
the Northeastern University
grad student imagines herself
at nice restaurants. Into the
suitcase go the skirts and
dresses. But when she’s actual-
ly away, she has no interest in
dressing up. “Vacation modesets in,” she said.
The airlines aren’t helping
the problem, by the way. As
they ramp up charges for
checked and carry-on luggage,
the pressure is on to take even
fewer poorly chosen items.
Instagram is also a culprit,
confronting us with images of
beautiful people who trot the
Globe with no more than a car-
ry-on, said Sherry Kuehl, au-
thor of the Snarky in the Sub-
urbs books.
The in-your-face minimal-
ists give her packing shame.
“What is wrong with me that Iam paying checked luggage
charges?” she asked. “It’s like
I’m a hoarder and can’t make a
decision.”
But if she doesn’t bring ev-
erything her family needs, she
said, she fears she’ll be judged
as a bad mother. “So I pack like
I’m never going to see a Target
again.”
The packing problem is part
of larger vacation syndrome,
one mocked by Adam Sandler
in a fake TV commercial for
Romano Tours on “Saturday
Night Live.’’
He played an Italian tour
guide warning vacationers to
manage their expectations.
“If you were sad where you
are,” he tells viewers, “and then
you get on a plane to Italy, you
in Italy will be the same sad
you from before, just in a new
place.”
Here’s the clothing version
of Sandler’s ad: If you are an
insecure dresser at home, on
the road you will also be an in-
secure dresser. There aren’t
enough mesh packing cubes in
the world to fix what really ails
you.Beth Teitell can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow
her on Twitter @bethteitell.that handles the day-to-day
role of maintaining and updat-
ing driving records.
By all accounts, it has been
an absentee panel.
The acting registrar, Jamey
Tesler, who will chair Tuesday’s
meeting, said in a report issued
last week that it has been
“some time” since the three-
person board met in public,
and state transportation offi-
cials have not answered ques-
tions about when that last ses-
sion occurred.
That, Healey’s aides say, is
not her doing. Healey’s records
show the board has not con-
vened since 2015, said spokes-
woman Emalie Gainey, who
added that her office has since
“made repeated requests,”
mostly by phone, that it meet.
She also said that Healey’s
designee, Glenn Kaplan, chief
of the attorney general’s Insur-
ance and Financial Services Di-
vision, was never asked to vote
on the office’s current director,
Thomas Bowes, though that
decision is supposed to be
made by the board.
Healey is not planning to at-
tend Tuesday’s meeting; Ka-
plan will be there in her place.
“We have been disappointed
by the lack of leadership, man-
agement, and accountability by
the [Baker] administration on
this matter,” Gainey said in a
statement. “We have repeated-
ly asked for the board to con-
vene, to no avail. We look for-
ward to meeting [Tuesday] and
will advocate for changes to
leadership at the Merit Rating
Board.”
The scandal has spurred
Healey to investigate the com-
pany that employed the trou-
bled West Springfield trucker,
Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, before
the June 21 crash. And, during
an appearance this month on
WGBH’s “Greater Boston,”
Healey did not close the door to
pursuing other probes of the
Registry itself.
In the same appearance,
Healey — twice elected state-
wide and a rising star in the
Democratic Party — issued
scathing criticisms of the Reg-
istry and of Baker, a Republi-
can, saying that “ultimately,
he’s responsible” for misman-
agement at the agency.
“It is just shameful what
transpired,” Healey told host
Jim Braude, adding that it’s
“unacceptable to not have
those papers processed, to not
have the issue identified and
the resources put in place.”
Healey nodded to the other
ongoing reviews of the Regis-
try, including by the Legisla-
ture. “But my God,” she said. “I
think most of us were shocked
to learn that this was what was
happening within our own
Registry.”
Tuesday’s meeting is part of
an effort to “reactivate the stat-
utory oversight role” of the
board, Tesler said, and could
include votes on unspecified
“personnel changes.” State offi-
cials have not provided more
information on what that could
entail.
Yet as the board sat dor-
mant for years, problems quiet-
ly mounted at the Merit Rating
Board. Bowes and the former
registrar, Erin Deveney, have
said they knowingly stopped
processing paper notifications
from other states about Massa-
chusetts drivers in early 2018,
amid a separate backlog of in-
state notices.
The revelation prompted at
least one lawmaker to call for
Bowes’s resignation.
Registry officials also ad-uHEALEY
Continued from Page Amitted the Merit Rating Board
did not address years of back-
logged notifications after the
job of processing them was
transferred there from another
Registry unit in 2016.
Whether Deveney consulted
others about that decision re-
mains a focus of the legislative
investigation. If she did not tell
the Merit Rating Board’s over-
sight panel of the shift in re-
sponsibility, “it would be hard
to say that the other two board
members can be held account-
able,” said Representative Wil-
liam Straus, cochair of the
Committee on Transportation.
“That said, should a statuto-
rial three-member board be ac-
tively involved? I would say
yes,” said Straus, a Mattapoisett
Democrat who noted that a
more-regular board is among
the recommendations that
could emerge from the reviews
of the agency.
“I’m not excusing the board
for not meeting,” he said. “But
we have to be careful that we’renot entering a scapegoat mode
as to what went wrong.”
The Registry has been beset
by a series of failings, especially
its handling of Zhukovskyy’s
record. An interim report from
an outside firm disclosed that a
Registry employee, Michael
Noronha, had opened Zhuk-
ovskyy’s electronic record
weeks after the driver had re-
fused a chemical sobriety test
in Connecticut and saw an
alert suggesting his commer-
cial license should be suspend-
ed.
But Noronha closed the file
after seven seconds, without
makinganychanges.Zhuk-
ovskyy allegedly caused the
New Hampshire crash a month
later.
The 60-page audit from
Grant Thornton LLP has
drawn criticism from the Na-
tional Association of Govern-
ment Employees, which called
the decision to name Noronha
and his supervisor, Susan
Crispin, “mind-boggling and
truly unconscionable.”
Noronha told investigators
that he took no action on the
alert because he had never
been trained to.
“The question that should
be answered by this audit is
when did Governor Baker and
MassDOT Secretary [Stepha-
nie] Pollack know that the
RMV wasn’t meeting its obliga-
tion to the public on the public
safety aspect of the agency’s
mission?” David J. Holway, the
union’s president, said in a
statement Monday.
Deveney resigned shortly af-
ter the fatal accident, which
spurred the first of many dis-
closures about the Registry’s
operations.
Baker and Pollack have said
they first learned the agency
had been ignoring alerts on
law-breaking drivers the day
Deveney stepped down.Matt Stout can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow
him on Twitter @mattpstout.Healey sits on panel
overseeing office
tied to RMV scandal
Whenhopes,anxietiescrowdoutyoursocks
ADOBE/GLOBE STAFFPHOTOS BY JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFFPlastic
bag bill
facing
hurdles
Springfield-based grocery
chain Big Y phased out its
use of plastic shopping bags
in Massachusetts and
Connecticut as of Aug. 1.
“You get used to it,” said
Carol Cardoni (left) of
Norwood, who supported
the move.CRAIG F. WALKER/GLOBE STAFF/FILE 2019
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey said
she had called for an oversight panel to resume meeting.‘I’mnotexcusing
theboardfornot
meeting.Butwe
havetobecareful
thatwe’renot
enteringa
scapegoatmode.’
REPRESENTATIVE
WILLIAM STRAUS