This editorial appears in the Aug. 26, 2009, Yakima Herald-Republic.

Suddenly the Emerald City has lost some of its green luster.

Last week's resounding defeat of Seattle's 20-cent-a-piece fee on disposable shopping bags may lead outsiders to conclude the Pacific Northwest's love affair with environmentally friendly causes is overstated. With 57 percent voting against the tax, that could be a reasonable conclusion.

But not so fast. Supported overwhelmingly by the Seattle City Council, the bag tax -- while well meaning -- was onerous and misguided. It deserved to be dumped by the voters.

Last summer, Seattle's council members passed an ordinance establishing the 20-cent fee that shoppers were to pay at grocery, drug and convenience stores. With the revenue generated from the tax, the city intended to provide at least one reusable bag per household.

Of course, processing the fees and arranging for the distribution of the reusable bags create another level of government bureaucracy that, from our point of view, is more of a menace than the plastic bags themselves.

The Virginia-based American Chemistry Council, which represents the plastics industry, gathered enough signatures to put the measure on last week's primary ballot. During its campaign to defeat the ordinance, the bag lobby spent $1.4 million to get its message across to voters.

"It's a costly and unnecessary tax," argued the plastics council.

Supporters of the bag tax blamed the sour economy on the defeat and the fact they were outspent 15 to 1 by the plastics industry.

We would argue the lopsided defeat is also a sign that "behavior management techniques" rarely succeed when politicians get too far ahead of the public. The fact that San Francisco was the first city in the nation in 2007 to drill a stake through the heart of plastic bags should have given the Seattle council pause. But council members assumed the populace was in lock-step with them and charged ahead.

Wrong.

Persuading through public education would have been a better use of the council's time and money. Residents of the Pacific Northwest get the idea of keeping the environment as green as possible. They just don't need to be bludgeoned with it.

Leveling a hefty tax was misguided from the get-go. Mix that in with a whopper of an economic recession and you end up with a measure fit for only one thing -- the landfill.

Well done, voters. Once again they have proven to be smarter than politicians. Imagine that.

* Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Bob Crider, Spencer Hatton and Karen Troianello.