Here's a good reason we tend to avoid signing random petitions: As California Watch reports, Richmond resident, Rosa Lara, has been going door to door identifying herself as an organizer with the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes and collecting signatures for a petition against Richmond's upcoming November ballot measure to raise taxes on soda and other sweetened beverages. Unless she's specifically asked, Lara has been neglecting to tell residents that her group is supported by the American Beverage Association, the industry's main trade organization.
When Lara brought 900 signatures to the city council in May, along with a pile of papers representing the 100 businesses who had signed up to oppose the measure, she also failed to inform the council her coalition was backed by the lobby.
The Chronicle, who were also in the dark about Lara's affiliation with the lobby — or they didn't report it, noted in May that the tax will be a penny an ounce on sodas and any beverages with large amounts of sugar. The tax would generate between $2 and $8 million a year and would go toward after school sports programs, health care for children with diabetes, and healthier school meals.
Opponents of the measure are calling it a "tax on poor people." Lara told the council, as reported by California Watch:
We only have one grocery store. What’s going to happen to us? We’re going to have to walk,” Lara told the council. “We don’t have the resources to go out of the city. I’ve lived here my whole life - I haven’t seen changes. We need to make a change for the community. This isn’t the way.
If the measure is approved, Richmond would be the first city in the country to put a special tax on sodas and sugary drinks. Naturally, the beverage industry is taking notice. California Watch quotes Chuck Finnie, a vice president of the San Francisco public relations firm Barnes Mosher Whitehurst Lauter & Partners, which is working for the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes: “There are stakeholders nationwide who care about what happens in Richmond.”
