Photo by sjshoreman.

On the surface, Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett’s proposal to institute a tax on single-use shopping bags sounds a whole lot like the one that we’ve grown so accustomed to inside the ol’ D. of C. It’s the same amount per bag (five cents), there will be exemptions (like pharmacies, farmers markets and takeout joints) and revenues from the tax will go toward waterway cleanup and preservation. Of course, the one thing that Leggett’s proposal has that the District’s didn’t is a competing bill, one that could find Montgomery County out of step with the remainder of the state.

Leggett’s measure is being proposed at the same time as similar legislation in the Old Line State’s House of Delegates. That bill, the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Consumer Retail Choice Act, serves the same purpose, but there are slight differences — for example, while MoCo’s bill would allow retailers to hang on to one cent of the charge, the Maryland bill would allow for one to two cents to be withheld by stores. A small difference, sure, but when we’re talking about millions of bags, that gets to be a sizable amount of cash. The Montgomery County Council — which has to approve Leggett’s proposal — breaks from the state when it comes to a provision in the state’s legislation which would prohibit counties from implementing their own taxes for five years after the state tax was implemented. It appears that the County would be able to institute its own tax if both measures pass; if Leggett’s proposal is accepted, it will go into effect on January 1, 2012

Of course, this might all be little more than a legislative curiosity — while Leggett’s bill sounds like it has a decent chance at getting the approval of the County Council, bills to institute a bag tax statewide in Maryland have failed twice over the last two legislative sessions. Bottom line: if you’re one of the people who threatened to start driving into Maryland to avoid paying the bag tax, well, you might want to start trying Virginia.