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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 25, 1990                   TAG: 9004250652
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Short

CIGARETTE TAX IDEA DROPPED IN RICHMOND

A unanimous City Council has rejected a proposed 20-cents-a-pack cigarette tax in this city where tobacco giant Philip Morris is the largest private employer.

"Tobacco is intertwined in the social and economic fabric of Richmond and has been for 200 years," Page Sutherland of the Tobacco Institute said at the council meeting Monday night.

He said the tax would have cost the city millions of dollars in related sales.

The measure would have raised $3.2 million. It was one of several proposals in City Manager Robert Bobb's proposed 1990-91 budget aimed at shifting the tax burden from property owners to consumers.

Twenty-nine localities in the state impose a cigarette tax, but Richmond was viewed by cigarette manufacturers as a place where they needed to prevail.

New York-based Philip Morris employs 11,000 people at a cigarette manufacturing plant here.

- Associated Press

by CNB