Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991                   TAG: 9102020432
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROB EURE POLITICAL WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

BOTTLE BILL DIES ON FLOOR

After a 90-minute debate - nearly all of it between Marye and the measure's perennially strongest foe, Sen. William Fears, D-Accomac - the Senate killed the measure 25 to 12. Marye's 10-cent deposit on all beverage containers got no more votes than the last time a bottle bill reached the full Senate in the mid-1980s.

Friday was the first time a measure Marye authored had won committee approval and he had the opportunity to argue it on the floor.

Marye began with a story about a barber in Shawsville when he was little who started spinning tales for his customers with "this time boys, I'm going to tell the truth."

Marye proceeded to argue that his measure would bring the state $27 million a year from unclaimed deposits - money he wanted to use to help localities meet the pending mandate to eliminate 25 percent of their solid waste by 1995.

"I do not think you can take lightly a bill that can generate this kind of revenue," he said. "We can raise $27 million at no cost to the taxpayer, at no cost to the consumer. It's better than the lottery."

But Fears, in a 35-minute speech, argued that the bill singles out "one little middle industry, the drink and beer distributors" to tax for the litter problem.

Fears and Marye, among the Senate's most colorful debaters, traded any number of folksy barbs during the debate.

Fears noted that farmers want the bill to cut down on bottles and cans thrown in their fields that can damage machinery.

"If the guy would hire workers who don't drink wine and throw the bottles down in the fields, we wouldn't have the problem to begin with," Fears the lawyer said to Marye the farmer.

"When a little hillside farmer from Shawsville goes up against a flatland lawyer, it's a tough row to hoe," Marye answered. "If I had committed the most heinous crime in the world and was guilty as sin, he's the lawyer I'd hire because he can distort anything."

The vote was no surprise to supporters of the bottle bill. Sen. Charles Waddell, D-Woodstock, who sponsored the last bottle law that made it to the floor, said he and the other supporters were taking lots on whether "we get to 15 or 16 votes."

After the vote, Marye said he will keep his word and not carry the bill again. He said he had become so "emotionally involved" with the anti-litter legislation and he and the bill have become identified with each other.

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