02/15/2017:
Cuomo blocks New York City's plastic bag fee
Efforts to keep plastic bags from polluting regional waterways took a significant step back this week when NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo blocked NYC’s 5-cent bag fee just hours before it was to take effect. The move affects NJ because grocery bags and other thin films make up about 20% of the plastic garbage found in the rivers and streams in the two states' shared watershed, according to a study last year by NY/NJ Baykeeper. NYC’s fee and a similar one proposed for NJ have faced significant opposition from plastics manufacturers.  Plastic grocery bags have become so synonymous with litter that they have been banned in several U.S. cities, California and Hawaii, and China and India, among other countries. But Cuomo called the fee "deeply flawed" because store owners would be allowed to keep the estimated $100 million raised annually by the fee, instead of the state using it to fund environmental programs. Cuomo, who has a long-standing feud with NYC Mayor City Bill de Blasio, instead announced a task force to report on the effects of plastic bags statewide by the end of the year.
 
02/14/2017:
How Deep a Tobacco Hole Would Walgreens Leave?
The quickly growing influence of stockholders is putting public companies such as Walgreens on the defensive. With investors pressuring the drug-store giant to retreat from tobacco just as rival CVS decided to do in 2015, the hole Walgreens would leave could trigger a major windfall for convenience retailers. As reported earlier this year, Walgreens has had to respond to growing shareholder concerns that its health-and-wellness mantra runs contrary to tobacco sales. CVS said the contradiction led to its withdrawal from the category.  While saying it is currently not considering such a drastic divorce, Walgreens officials did leave open the possibility for ongoing discussion. Click above to see what a potential end to tobacco sales at Walgreens would mean to c-stores and other tobacco retailers …
 
02/10/2017:
Retail Groups Meet With Lawmakers on Swipe Fee Reform
The retail community banded together and met with federal legislators to discuss keeping hard-fought swipe fee reforms in place.  More than 60 representatives from NACS, the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), National Retail Federation (NRF), Merchant Advisory Group, Food Marketing Institute, and the National Restaurant Association visited Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers "how pro-competitive debit reforms have positively impacted their businesses and ask Congress to stand with Main Street retailers by opposing any efforts to weaken or repeal the law," according to RILA. The 2010 Durbin Amendment — part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act — put in place debit card swipe fee regulations which, in part, capped those fees at 21 cents per transaction plus five basis points, or .05 percent of the transaction. However, those reforms have come under fire from federal legislators looking to repeal the regulations.
 
02/10/2017:
Christie rejects sales tax cut for 5 N.J. cities
Gov. Christie took action that guarantees shoppers patronizing many businesses in cities across the state will pay twice the sales tax they'd been charged for about three decades. The sales tax had long been cut in half for shoppers patronizing businesses participating in the Urban Enterprise Program, which was designed to boost commercial activity in economically depressed areas. The tax actually went up to the full 6.875 percent state rate on Jan. 1 in five cities  -- Bridgeton, Camden, Newark, Plainfield, and Trenton -- when Christie did not act on a bill that would have extended the program two years. On Friday, he conditionally vetoed that bill, ensuring that the sales tax will not be cut back in those cities.  Christie said the UEZ program faced "apathetic participation" and delivered a "devastating impact on state revenues without any demonstrable benefit" to the cities. "The alleged need for, and merits of, the program urged by its supporters is belied by the fact that only 18.3 percent of qualified businesses in UEZs participate in the program," Christie said in his veto. "I cannot condone this bill's further extension of this wasteful and failed program." His rejection was met with swift disapproval from the bill's advocates.