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City councilor Theresa Kail-Smith this morning introduced legislation that would regulate how adult entertainment businesses are permitted and operate in the city.
If the changes go through, zoning rules would be more clear cut … and lap dances would be outlawed.
Spurred by two new clubs proposed for the North Side and the West End — part of her district — Smith says “interest in more adult entertainment establishments is continuing to billow forth, since we remain, for all practical purposes, the Wild West when it comes to adult business operation.”
Permitting for adult entertainment — like strip clubs, adult book stores and theatres — is currently handled through city zoning code and requires permission from the City Planning Commission and City Council. Smith proposes changing the process to make it permitted “by use right” in the General and Urban Industrial districts.
“For decades upon decades, Pittsburgh has relied on essentially one rule when it came to regulated sexually-oriented businesses: you had to ask before you could open one,” Smith said at a press conference today. “This [legislation] is absolutely necessary to eliminate any perception of arbitrary decision-making by public officials based upon vague standards.”
The second bill deals with conduct, prohibiting entertainers “in a state of undress” from going within six feet of patrons. It also prohibits physical contact between them. Stages must be at least 18 inches high and rooms must be well-lit. Smith said current clubs will not be grandfathered into these regulations and will have to change how they operate.
The final bill requires that adult entertainment owners, operators, managers and employees are licensed, undergo criminal background checks and an annual renewal.
Smith says enforcement will fall to the Bureau of Building Inspection and the Department of Public Safety. As for enforcing the 6-foot/no-contact rule, she says “Enforcement is crucial but it’s going to hold owners accountable as well.”
Bram Reichbaum, author of the Pittsburgh Comet blog and research consultant in Smith’s office, says that concerned residents have already volunteered to monitor the establishments and call the city’s 311 line if they spot violations.
Appeals will be handled through nuisance property appeals board.
Smith said the city’s adult entertainment ordinance has been “Constitutionally problematic” after it was successfully challenged by HDV-Hustler club in Chateau. The city is also currently appealing a judge’s approval for a club proposed by Marquise Investments in the West End. The appeal is still pending.
Smith said she modeled her bill off of an Ohio ordinance and has been vetted by the city’s law department. “These are the types of laws which can ensure that important First Amendment freedoms can co-exist peaceably in an urban environment, attracting as few negative secondary effects as possible for communities, neighbors, patrons and employees alike.”
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2011.
Thanks for the write-up, Lauren. A few notes:
We’re eliminating any perception of “arbitrary” decision-making by public officials based on vague standards. Looks like the word “arbitrary” fell out on one of our ends. At any rate, that cures the glaring 1st Amendment infirmity in the status-quo.
And the legislation is *being* vetted by the city’s Law Deptartment. One other piece of legislation that arrived today, which came over from the Mayor’s office, is the hiring of a high-powered local attorney to give this effort the attention it will require at all stages. You’ll probably see the rules we introduced today get tweaked and tightened over the next month or two.
I think that the elimination of lap-dancing is intended to simply bankrupt the adult industry in Pittsburgh. Further it is not clear that there has been any set of issues, such as entertainers moonlighting as prostitutes, that would warrant such a restriction. I fully recognize that many do not like the adult industry and find it repugnant but there seems little reason to place potentially fatal restrictions on it in the hopes that it will just go away.
Further still I think it needs to be pointed out that the women that work in these industries are often those who are the most in need of the wages this industry can provide. Single, uneducated mothers and college students have very limited options when it comes to supporting themselves. There is shortage of living wage jobs in this city that are open to those with little education and experience. While I welcome the zoning issues raised by Kail-Smith, I think the proposal to end lap-dancing goes too far and must be reconsidered.
This goes double during this daunting recession that has already disproportionately hurt women.
Larryville — The adult entertainment industry is actually thriving in cities like Seattle and San Diego, which have adopted similar regulations long ago. You can look it up. What is being curtailed are the increases in ambient crime and decreases in property values which so frequently accompany the industry when it is conducted recklessly.
Actually you are wrong about Seattle. They did impose a ban which was later overturned by a voter referendum. They have not had a ban in over 5 years. San Diego appears never to have considered such a ban and most cabarets in that city do advertise lap dances from what I can google. Indeed, the issue of a lap dance ban has often been very controversial in those cities that have attempted it. It is far from clear that any research can be pointed to which calls it an unvarnished good.
Further still, your point about the industry thriving doesn’t directly address my point about a living wage. A ban places more power in a club owner’s hands, and that doesn’t always translate into employee wages.
I have to admit to some difficulty in seeing how you are trying to make the argument you offer in your blog post. It seems to be adult business that you have a problem with since it is they that, according to your research, drive down property prices and attract a criminal element. Yet a ban on a certain kind of dance certainly won’t make a difference to that, will it? What kinds of dancing is on offer is beside the point if it is the business itself that drives the problems you cite!
This is why it seems like the Kail-Smith Proposal is aimed at shutting down the industry entirely. Unless you can cite some research that associates lap-dancing, specifically, with crime and not just adult industry with crime then it will appear that you are just targeting the most lucrative aspect of the business in an attempt to shut down their business.
Finally, if an uptick of crime is really the problem, why does the proposal aim to put these businesses into industrial areas and other zones that are notoriously difficult to police instead of putting them alongside bars and restaurants which already enjoy substantial policing at precisely the times when such establishments are open?
Lots to address, Larryville, and thank you for it. I have downloaded copies of the Seattle and San Diego codes very recently and many of the features in our leg are similar to what we see there, including the separation, but I’ll have to double-check if theirs has an *explicit* ban on contact as such. Whatever it is the City does eventually enact, I can guarantee it’s going to be legal and effective.
The sorts of crime which occur more frequently in the radius around clubs are detrimental to quality of life. It’s not a matter of being able to police the actual establishments, it’s the ability to police — or more to the point, quarantine, minimize — the impact of crime in the area all around it. We happen to think the places where people live, play and socialize are paramount. If you have a better idea for zoning restrictions I would sincerely be very interested in hearing it, nothing is off the table. And there will be public hearings, if you’re up to appearing at one to express these concerns.
You say: “What kinds of dancing is on offer is beside the point if it is the business itself that drives the problems you cite!”
We’re not talking about the foxtrot vs. the cha cha. We’re talking about dancing — not so much a problem and protected speech — versus whatever business it is that demands full body contact with a mostly naked person who is almost never a direct employee in a private room with a closed door. That is the kind of business that, for whatever reason, tends in the aggregate to attract an audience that is more likely to cause issues. I confess to not being in possession a formal psychoanalytic theory which might explain that correlation, but in the end the correlation is demonstrable and convincing.
This is at least one-twentieth as important a problem as is the deadly dysfunction in the South Side Intoxication District; why not use the money the mayor is withholding from the effort to clean up Carson Street to fund the attempted eradication of dirty dancing?
“We’re eliminating any perception of “arbitrary” decision-making by public officials based on vague standards. Looks like the word ‘arbitrary’ fell out on one of our ends.”
>>> Yep, that was a mistake on our part, and the story has been corrected.
Bram, I think you are proving my point here. My claim is that your legislation doesn’t need to be as prohibitive as it is. Specifically, it need not include a ban on contact.
Your claim is that adult business attracts crime and decreases property values. I accept this and so I acknowledge the need for zoning considerations and increased policing. However, I do not agree that driving it to industrial areas is the way to go. I favor a ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ approach and favor specialized ‘night entertainment’ zones such as South Side. (Though I think there is a good argument that this is already badly zoned since it is too mixed use and too close to residences).
But the hole in your argument, as I see it, is that the lap-dancing ban doesn’t speak to the problems you cite and only seems to because you employ an ad-hominem attack on certain clientele. You have provided no data to suggest that a lap-dance ban correlates with a decrease in crime! Further your argument that it does has the following structure. 1. People who are attracted to lap-dancing are deviants. 2. Deviants are more likely to commit crime. 3. Elimination of lap-dancing is a way to eliminate crime. But this is a spurious accusation and that is why it seems to me that the proposal is excessively moralistic.
Because this specific proposal cuts into a particularly lucrative aspect of this industry and does so without the support of any justification it will hurt the industry without realizing any important gains in property values or decreases in crime. For that reason it looks like it aims only to hurt the industry in the hopes that it will dry up an go away. But the industry has a right to exist, and so waving the specter of its attracting deviants only serves to paper over a hole in the justification you offer and, to my mind, reveals hidden motives.
Larryville – Don’t put words in my mouth. I don’t believe in “deviants”. And if I didn’t present the data you are after yet it’s because now is not the time and this is not the arena — but I’d be impressed if you already examined every study on those two websites and all the others mentioned in the body of the legislation well enough to confidently throw it all in the trash.
Bear in mind, however, the courts do NOT require ironclad “proof” of anything. They require that legislators be motivated by reasonable arguments or theories and after a sincere effort to collect the best available data. You and I both know two people can debate the meaning of any study until the cows come home.
Your points regarding zoning are reasonable in my opinion. There is some data to suggest that secondary effects multiply when more than one club cluster together in close quarters — see Garden Grove — but if Council is more comfortable with creating a red light district then that can also work.
Bear in mind, also, another secondary effect is the spread of STD’s. You know that part of a lap dance when a performer’s labial or clitoral ring bounces off your nose a few times? In any other context that’d be considered “sex”, but at an adult cabaret, it’s considered the kind of dancing which can spread disease.
Particularly when it’s performed behind closed doors for some very important Free Speech reason.
Wow. Must be the heat. I’ll take Bram’s word for it that that’s what happens in a lap dance. Good research! Coincidentally, I was watching an old Redd Foxx routine on YouTube last night and he was riffing on 69 and alluding to similar labial/nasal contact. Hope a ban on Redd Foxx records isn’t next on council’s agenda. Could be trouble for Jerry’s Records.
“You know that part of a lap dance when a performer’s labial or clitoral ring bounces off your nose a few times?”
>>>> While I’ve always expected the phrase “labial or clitoral ring bounces off your nose” to appear on this website someday … I never thought it would be the news/politics blog.
Lovin’ this job.
No Bram, I am not familiar with that part of the dance. Please don’t suggest that I am! While we are at it, if you are going to take me to task for putting words in your mouth, I would appreciate you not describing my proposal for integrating the zoning of clubs, bars, adult entertainment and nightlife as “creating a red-light district”!
I don’t pretend to have read every study on those pages. I only point out that the studies you do cite don’t make the kind of discrimination between contact-entertainment and non-contact-entertainment that would justify a ban on lap-dancing. Further, without that, I think the argument that lap-dancing attracts “an audience that is more likely to cause issues” has no basis. The basis that you cite, statistical correlation, has yet to be provided in a form that gives support for this very specific point in your legislation. That is a hole in your justification.
I am not interested in whether the prohibition you desire is legal according to current case law, but whether it is desirable and can be supported by an argument that isn’t ad-hominem. That is the reasonableness basis I think a law should have to pass, at minimum. It may not be the reasonableness basis a court uses, but I would hope that a judge considering a challenge wouldn’t accept the argument you have made here and might very well rule that a law made on such support is overly broad. You say that reasonable people can disagree about what a study means, but in this case you want to claim the benefit of that doubt and I don’t think you are entitled to it.
Finally, the point about STD’s and free-speech are red herrings. I support the staus quo because of a concern for the living wage that this industry provides to otherwise unskilled women. Further, I don’t see it as government’s concern to regulate away every from of imaginable risk. We could cut down on STD transmission by requiring very bright lighting in the City’s bars,free condoms with every third drink purchase and a graphic flyer posted in the bathroom. But at the end of the day I think that is an illegitimate interference with a private business. Certainly such regulations might be legal, or made legal, but the better question when considering new laws is ‘is this desirable?’ and ‘can this be supported by the facts I have at my disposal?’. I think the ban you propose, a very specific portion of your legislation, fails both tests.
Larryville wrote:
“That is the reasonableness basis I think a law should have to pass, at minimum. It may not be the reasonableness basis a court uses, but I would hope that a judge considering a challenge wouldn’t accept the argument you have made here and might very well rule that a law made on such support is overly broad.”
If any judges or justices find themselves reading this, as part of their day-job that is, I hope they retire from this sort of material as soon as appropriate and move on to something the City Solicitor brings to their attention. It’s going to be his job to deal with the justice system, and my job to deal with the Internet. It’s a little unspoken division of labor we have going and yes there shall be some obvious stove piping. So again, Your Honors — thank you for your consideration here, but might I suggest kindly that it may be time to move along to more pertinent matters.