Just ask my friends at Safeway, who don’t mind – or at least don’t say so – when I force them to fill up the superior Metropolitan Market bags from across the street.

So I’m all for the reuse and reduction thing. I’ve even started the transition to cloth bags. But I’m just not ready to be required – or economically coerced – to bring my own bags to the store.

Some outside the center of the universe known as Seattle have likely chalked it up to those wacky lefties. But I wonder if the folks on Elliot Bay realize that in adopting a 20-cent fee on paper and plastic bags they are taking an economic shot at rural Washington, where lots of people get paid for growing trees and making paper.

The benefit of those jobs ripples through the economies in the Olympic Peninsula, in southwest Washington and parts of Eastern Washington. But those jobs are in decline, and many who live there feel under assault, not just from economic changes but from political ones.

Making paper isn’t environmentally benign, but neither is making airplanes or electronics. Yet we’re all supposed to favor Boeing against Airbus and Microsoft against its economic rivals because they’re part of the “home team.”

And team players step up when Boeing needs a bailout, when sports franchises need to be saved, when viaducts need to be replaced, when congestion needs to be relieved. Seattle and its suburbs are the economic engine of Washington, and lawmakers everywhere are expected to help out.

Why shouldn’t residents of rural counties and timber counties expect the same thing? They should, but they don’t. Many outside the metropolitan area see the cities on Puget Sound as their arrogant enemies. And they often look for ways of getting even.

During the Mariners stadium debate in 1995, I asked about this underlying resentment.

“They have a great economy because they filled their wetlands and poured concrete,” said state Sen. Jim Hargrove (D-Hoquiam). “They messed their litter box, and now they want to turn my district into a park.”

So a city charging 20 cents for each bag – and making no distinction between paper made here and plastic made elsewhere – seems like a little thing in that city. But out in timber country, it’s a much bigger thing.

“We grow trees in this state, and we make paper in this state, and paper is recyclable,” state Rep. Dean Takko told his hometown Longview Daily News. “I don’t have an issue with plastic bags, but the idea of charging for paper really started to bother me.”

So the Democrat, who is vice chairman of the House Local Government Committee, said he will sponsor a bill in January to pre-empt local governments in Washington from taxing bags or from requiring stores to charge consumers for bags.

The article in the Daily News sparked a debate among readers, ranging from “We need to put a fence around Seattle and make it the 51st state; I try to avoid the place myself,” and “Reduce paper and you will reduce jobs,” to “Seattle is extremely successful, perhaps we could learn from them instead of sounding like a bunch of ignorant hicks.”

Yeah, well, even ignorant hicks have to eat. And the timber economy is under enough pressure globally without having to absorb shots from neighbors. Even Takko’s fellow Democrat, Maralyn Chase from the Seattle suburb of Shoreline, made a distinction between paper and plastic in her bill last session to ban thin plastic bags. (It didn’t pass.)

I’ll end with an idea proposed by my nephew who lives in Seattle, but who will remain unidentified to protect the guilty. The first time he is asked whether he wants 20-cent paper or 20-cent plastic, he plans on saying, “I don’t want any bags. And yes, I will need help out with this.”

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657

peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics