What would a bill in the State House that deals with a number of mundane agricultural and consumer issues be without a last-minute attempt to undermine home rule and environmental sustainability?
Well, state lawmakers apparently will never know.
Last week, as they debated House Bill 7007, the bill's sponsor, Lithia Republican Jake Raburn, added an amendment that would bar cities and counties from passing bans on polystyrene food containers (a substance colloquially referred to as Styrofoam, a trademarked name).
The effort is set to be discussed this week before the full house.
Not that it's surprising; lawmakers also want to make it illegal for cities and counties to pass fracking bans.
As with the attempt to preempt bans on the controversial practice of fracking, the effort could be in response to dozens of coastal communities' passage of polystyrene bans (including a handful in Florida) in an effort to protect waterways and wildlife from the substance, which contains synthetic materials that can be toxic to marine life.
Raburn defended the amendment as a way of ensuring food safety, because obviously there's no sanitary environmentally friendly alternative to that sweet, sweet, fossil fuel-derived, non-biodegradable stuff we all know and love.
