Rep. Butts gets it from the right

There are 7,414 state legislators throughout this country. In that fairly good-sized pond of public servants, the biggest fish is Maine’s own Rep. Joseph Brooks, Democrat of Winterport.

Rep. Brooks is big – USA Today front page, CNN, ABC big – but not for the usual reasons obscure lawmakers suddenly gets famous. No outrageous, hateful views, no criminal conduct, no lewd or lascivious behavior. Just good old-fashioned lawmaking. Specifically, Butt Bill lawmaking.

(Disclosure time. Rep. Brooks used to work for this newspaper. He hasn’t for a couple of years. He doesn’t tell us what to write about. We don’t tell USA Today what to put on its front page.)

The Butt Bill is, as you already know, the legislation Rep. Brooks authored that addresses the issue of cigarette litter, the astronomical number of spit-soaked, toxin-imbued, non-biodegradable filter tips smokers toss on the ground for others to enjoy (Maine smokers alone produce about 2.2 billion of these little beauties every year). The bill would put a nickel deposit on every filter cig, that’s $1 a pack, returned when the used filter is turned in to the same redemption centers that now take cans and bottles.

To say the Butt Bill has clicked with the public and the media is an understatement almost as gross as the litter itself. The roughly 85 percent of Americans who don’t smoke and the smokers who were taught as children not to toss garbage on the ground have had it up to here with a parks, beaches and sidewalks that increasingly seem to be constructed entirely of nicotine-laced plastic fibers wrapped in indestructible brown paper. Redemption centers like the idea – they could use the business and say used cigarette filters aren’t any yuckier than used cans and bottles.

And the major news media is bonkers for it. In the last month or so, Rep. Brooks has been hit up for more than 50 interviews in this country and beyond. The BBC’s called him twice with the erudite Alistair Cook giving him favorable mention. This morning, Rep. Brooks will be doing interviews with CBC reporters in Toronto and Ottawa.

When he introduced the bill last fall, Rep. Brooks says he “had no idea it would get so big” and says the reaction all along the line, from the reviser’s office that puts legislative notions into bill form, to fellow legislators to the media and the public “has followed the same progression. First, there’s the one-liners – I’m Rep. Butts, it’s butt this and butt that. Then people start to think about it and realize it’s not just a novel idea, it’s a good idea.”

Most people. The negative reaction has been extraordinarily loud and ugly, especially from that part of the political spectrum that mistakes being cranky for being conservative. Rush Limbaugh – whom I usually find somewhat endearing with his cheesy “talent on loan from God” shtick – has declared this mild-mannered Son of Maine to be a public nuisance of unparalleled proportions. Syndicated talk radio guy Howie Carr, the lovable “bad boy” who plays a laugh track when reporting on gruesome accidental deaths, dumps on Brooks almost daily, accusing him of being an ex-smoker zealot (Brooks quit 15 years ago – my guess is he’s over it by now). A local talk outlet invited him on recently for the sole purpose of calling him names. One of the more mature listeners to that program called in to suggest a campaign to have smokers empty their car ashtrays on his lawn.

Sometimes, the irony is too much to bear. The other day, someone showed me an editorial clipped from a leading Florida conservative newspaper declaring the Butt Bill the worst bit of government it had ever seen. Attention, anyone in Florida: When it comes to thoughts on good government, don’t call us, we’ll call you. Maybe in a hundred years or so.

Like me, you no doubt find this reaction from the right confusing, conflicted. After all, true conservatives believe that people should pick up after themselves or be willing, gladly and cheerfully willing, to pay someone to do it for them.

That’s exactly what the Butt Bill does, but these faux conservatives don’t see it that way. Instead, some endorse the Welfare Queen approach to litter – if taxpayers want clean parks and beaches, let them pick up the tab. Others say the remedy is increased enforcement of litter laws – if it means more cops, more courthouse bureaucrats, more taxes, tough luck. Amazingly, some even say the answer is education – a public awareness effort to raise smoker sensitivity on the issue. Push a cranky conservative far enough and you get a whiny liberal.

The issue already is moving beyond name-calling. With every new objection that butts are too filthy and disgusting to pick up, the idea of leaving them on the ground becomes increasingly unacceptable. Rep. Brooks says the discussion has turned from butt jokes to the practical details of how to safely dispose of these billions of bite-sized dioxin doses. And he’s already hearing from entrepreneurs with ideas on how this problem can be turned into opportunity – recycling the filter material, developing and marketing reusable filters, pocket ashtrays, etc. Conservatives, don’t you know, just love entrepreneurs.

And if they hate the Butt Bill, so what? It’s too far along to kill now, the interest in other states about similar legislation is too keen, the question of holding smokers responsible for their litter is not “whether” but “when.” The bill gets a work session today by the Legislature’s Business and Economic Development Committee and, although a majority report in favor is in doubt, it certainly will get the votes to move it to debate by the full Legislature, with TV cameras, the national, maybe even world, press in the gallery, the works. Big is about to get bigger.

Bruce Kyle is the assistant editorial page editor for the Bangor Daily News.