Shopping Cart Law Doesn’t Work

Thanks for your Dec. 16 article on shopping carts. Let us hope that it will assist in a change from the ill-conceived new state law, which inhibits cities from retrieval of abandoned carts.

The California Grocers Assn., the principal sponsor of the new law, is dead wrong in saying that the shopping cart issue has been overblown. The problem of abandoned carts is a serious neighborhood blight issue and has been steadily increasing. The cause is not only the individuals who take the carts but the grocers who have failed to deter and prosecute the offenders.

The trade group’s contention that shopping carts are an unfortunate but necessary form of transport for the poor and elderly simply doesn’t hold true. If so, why isn’t this a national problem? I just returned from a 7,000-mile auto trip across the United States and observed only one abandoned cart outside California. I believe it is a disservice by the association to single out the “elderly” as one of the principal offenders on this issue. I haven’t observed that at all.

The California Grocers Assn. has taken a permissive policy stance on the shopping cart issue. It is willing to spend thousands of dollars to retrieve carts and ask cities to help rather than step up to the real issue of stopping the theft in the first place. The bureaucratic retrieval procedures of the new law will extend the time on the street for abandoned carts. All because of our state Legislature pacifying the special interests of the California Grocers Assn.

BOB BALL

Anaheim