A community? Or a Washington, D.C. PR firm?

In November, voters in two cash-strapped California towns — El Monte and Richmond — will go to the polls and decide the fate of a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks. The tax would have two benefits: raising money for the cities and reducing the consumption of unhealthy sodas.

But residents of Richmond have been met with a barrage ofAi??propagandaAi??against the tax. Here’s a billboard that a group calling itself the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes is running. It features a “Richmond resident” warning that the tax would hit the “poor and working people hardest.”

Whatever the merits of this argument, it’s interesting to look into whether it’s actually poor or working people that put up this billboard. The website listed on the board features arguments against the soda tax and urges Richmond residents to vote it down. The website notes that it is partially funded by the American Beverage Association — soda companies — but also claims to represent “thousands of Richmond residents, labor and businesses against unfair taxes.”

But let’s take a look at who really built this website and the public relations campaign designed to take down this soda tax. We did a domain search forAi??http://www.norichmondbeveragetax.com/. It’s registered as a GoDaddy address. The domain is registered byAi??Goddard Claussen Public Affairs — a public relations firm based in Washington, D.C — far away from the town of Richmond, California.

Goddard Claussen recently became Goddard Gunster. Its founding partner is Ben Goddard, who famously crafted the 1993-1994 “Harry and Louise” ad campaign that killed health care reform efforts under the Clinton Administration.

It is perhaps fitting that the same folks who helped kill a program to make Americans healthier are now siding with the products that make them sicker.