Was it Abraham Lincoln who talked about being able to fool some of the people? Those of us working for healthier communities here in Los Angeles to live and raise our kids are not fooled. And we're not cheering the announcement that San Fernando candidate Steve Veres is moving here to seek election as our city councilmember.
Veres wants to succeed current councilmember Tom LaBonge. Tom has been a steady ally against pollution who helped pass the LA city ban on single-use plastic bags. City residents dispose more than 2 billion such bags each year. Thousands end up in the LA River, which flows through our 4th District. The river then dumps tons of plastic bag pollution into the ocean, where it lines the sea floor and shores and gets eaten by marine creatures. My thumbnail photo shows one of the plastic bags I found floating in the LA River during a recent walk along its banks.
A recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council reports that LA spends more than $36 million each year and California cities spend $500 million to clean up litter and prevent trash from entering local waterways, $100 million on plastic bags alone. What a waste. Budget savings and pollution prevention are two big reasons we need a statewide plastic bag ban like the one LaBonge helped pass here.
How does Veres measure up? He is chief of staff to the state senator who killed the state plastic bag ban. But you wouldn't know it from the hot air he was blowing to puff up his new campaign.
Veres says, "I'm running for the Los Angeles City Council ... to improve environmental quality and bring about greater transparency and inclusiveness at City Hall." That takes a lot of gall. This spring Veres helped his boss Senator Kevin DeLeon do the dirty work to defeat Senate Bill 405 that would put a single-use bag ban in state law. This is not the kind of Democrat we need representing us.
And transparency? Por favor, Señor Veres. Isn't one reason your boss killed the statewide bag ban because the man who pulls his strings, Fabian Nuñez, counts the plastic polluters as a major client of his lobbying firm, Mercury Public Affairs? This is the worst kind of entanglement for a local leader, who needs to fight for local residents without conflicts of interest. It's the last thing we need in our next councilmember.
For Veres to seek to replace Tom LaBonge, who is cleaning up our city and the LA River by banning single-use plastic bags, is the depth of arrogance. And it's high time we overcame the misguided resistance of him and his boss to pass a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags.
