City Hall Shorts: Taxing Bags & Popping Balloons; Canceled Checks; Budget At A Glance + Immodest Water Rate Increase.

RVA 5x5 - March 29, 2025

No algorithms. No content filters. No A.I. — Honest and insightful analysis from Richmond, VA.

Today’s issue has a look at:

• Environmental measures coming to City Council that could tax plastic bags as well as fine those who release balloons.

• The Finance Department sent out 6,000 erroneous real estate tax rebate checks and will miss the statutory deadline for replacing them.

• Take a glance at the city’s new budget, including water rate increases and the eye-popping amount utility bills have risen in the last four years.

STORY #1 — Taxing Bags and Popping Balloons
Richmond City Council is considering three environmental measures next month beginning with a 5-cent tax on plastic bags if you use one with a purchase at a grocery store, pharmacy, or convenience store. If approved, the tax would take effect in January 2026 and could raise more than $370,000 and cost the average resident $2.12 per year, according to a report delivered to the Government Relations committee this week.

Tara Worden, a manager in Richmond’s Office of Sustainability, said, “Single-use plastics have a devastating impact both on our environment and on our city infrastructure. Plastic waste is a significant contributor to drain blockages throughout the city. These materials break down into microplastics that then enter the James River and the Chesapeake Bay.”

The state legislature passed legislation in 2020 that allowed localities to impose such a tax with restrictions on what the money could be used for, such as environmental education and initiatives, recycling, and purchasing reusable bags for people receiving SNAP benefits (aka food stamps). Ten other localities have passed a tax and the state allows the locality to share the revenue with the retailer; in the first year the city would keep three cents and the retailer two and then beyond year one, the city keeps four cents and the retailer one cent. And there are plastic bag tax exceptions: the law does not tax plastic bags used to wrap perishables like meat or ice cream, dry cleaning bags, or small bags like pet waste bags or a box of many garbage bags, etc.

Roanoke, which is just less than half Richmond’s population, collected $182,000 in the first year (2022), which means they sold about 6 million plastic bags. When the revenue formula changed in year two (2023), they collected $209,000 and sold 750,000 fewer bags (about 5.25 million).

Fairfax County (which has about 1.1 million residents) collected about $7 million in the first three years of the program. They have put that funding towards litter removal, educational programs, latex paint recycling, composting initiatives at farmers markets, storm drain labeling and recycling toolkits for multifamily housing communities and also estimate that the program will have removed about 4 million bags from circulation since 2022.

Of course, the part where this idea gets worrisome is that it is a self-reported tax, according to Worden, which Richmond does not administer well (see the meals tax