Photo by soleil1016As Tim Craig noted over at D.C. Wire on Wednesday, a coalition of more than three dozen local restaurants and businesses have launched a website and advertising campaign to try to defeat Mary Cheh’s soda tax proposal.
The website behind the “No D.C. Beverage Tax” campaign is pretty bare bones, but it does offer a list of those businesses that have signed on to the effort. Some of those names include Au Bon Pain, Pizza Bolis, Safeway Inc., Magruder’s, and Blimpies, plus at least a dozen or so local liquor and convenience stores.
In addition to purchasing a full-page ad in the Northwest Current, as Craig reported, DCist has also gotten wind of some anti-soda tax robo-calls from Big Soda floating around out there. We’ve yet to be able to listen to one of the messages for ourselves, but at least three DCist readers have now told us they’ve received a call urging them to contact their council member on the issue. Did you get one of these calls? Let us know what it said in the comments.
Cheh has proposed a one-cent tax per ounce of soda and other sugary beverages sold in the District, with an aim to direct that revenue to fund her Healthy Schools program.