Cite as: 511 U. S. 383 (1994)
Souter, J., dissenting
to finance facilities out of tax revenues. Protection of the public fisc is a legitimate local benefit directly advanced by the ordinance and quite unlike the generalized advantage to local businesses that we have condemned as protectionist in the past. See Regan, 84 Mich. L. Rev., at 1120 ("[R]aising revenue for the state treasury is a federally cognizable benefit"; protectionism is not); cf. Fort Gratiot Sanitary Landfill, Inc. v. Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources, 504 U. S. 353, 357 (1992) (law protects private, not publicly owned, waste disposal capacity for domestic use); Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U. S., at 627, n. 6 (expressing no opinion about State's power to favor its own residents in granting access to state-owned resources).17
Moreover, flow control offers an additional benefit that could not be gained by financing through a subsidy derived from general tax revenues, in spreading the cost of the facility among all Clarkstown residents who generate trash. The ordinance does, of course, protect taxpayers, including those who already support the transfer station by patronizing it, from ending up with the tab for making provision for large-volume trash producers like Carbone, who would rely on the municipal facility when that was advantageous but opt out whenever the transfer station's price rose above the market price. In proportioning each resident's burden to the amount of trash generated, the ordinance has the added virtue of providing a direct and measurable deterrent to the generation of unnecessary waste in the first place. And in any event it is far from clear that the alternative to flow control (i. e., subsidies from general tax revenues or municipal bonds) would be less disruptive of interstate commerce
17 The Court did strike down California's depression-era ban on the "importation" of indigent laborers despite the State's protestations that the statute protected the public fisc from the strain of additional outlays for poor relief, but the Court stressed the statute's direct effect on immigrants instead of relying on any indirect effects on the public purse. See Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160, 174 (1941).
429
Page: Index Previous 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007