Sudbury May Institute New Fee For Bags At Checkout

SUDBURY, MA — Sudbury may soon seek a per-bag fee at checkout in a bid to push shoppers toward using reusable bags, but state lawmakers will also get their say.

An article heading to Town Meeting this spring would require stores to charge a 10-cent fee for every single-use bag used at checkout. Retailers would get to keep the fees to "defray costs of switching to more environmentally sustainable checkout bag options."

Sudbury has had a plastic bag ban in place since 2018, but that law didn't require retailers to charge a fee at checkout for paper bags.

If Town Meeting approves the fee, the Sudbury Select Board would have to ask state lawmakers to pass a law allowing the town to enshrine the fee as a local law.

It's unclear what the fate of the law would be on Beacon Hill. When Gov. Maura Healey was attorney general, she struck down 10-cent fee attempts by Westborough, Lincoln, Mashpee and Buckland. In those rulings, Healey said the state's Home Rule Amendment "prohibits municipalities from enacting 'private or civil law governing civil relationships except as an incident to an exercise ... of an independent municipal power.'"

This is the second time Sudbury has attempted to enact the 10-cent fee. Sudbury Town Meeting in September 2020 authorized a petition to the Legislature, but the bill failed to pass.

The Sudbury Select Board already endorsed the Town Meeting article in a 5-0 vote.