At a public forum last Tuesday to discuss Seattle's new panhandling ordinance, I challenged Councilmember Tim Burgess to meaningfully back up his claim that there is no 15-foot "safety bubble" that follows anyone engaged in a parking or ATM transaction, thus turning pretty much any commercial district into a dynamic no-go zone for solicitors of any sort, including Real Change vendors.
Burgess replied unequivocally. The ordinance language, he said, was revisited last week and changed. "There is no safety bubble," he stoutly declared.
But I checked. The safety bubble lives. I see it right there in subparagraph f.iii, which says that so long as any document related to the transaction remains in one's hand, that person constitutes a mobile no-solicitation zone. Our lawyer friends see it too.
Why the attachment to the safety bubble? Is it really worth all the obfuscation and legal vulnerability?
Here's my best guess. The safety bubble makes the possible application of the ordinance nearly universal. Each of the 25 known panhandlers on the Downtown Seattle Association's hit list, and anyone else that law enforcement cares to target, could easily be found in violation and ticketed. Repeatedly. Those tickets would default to misdemeanor warrants. There would be arrests, court appearances, and choices to be made. The bubble creates options.
Just four of the panhandlers on the Downtown Seattle Association list were identified by DSA's own ambassadors as "aggressive." With this new "tool," that won't matter. Any act of solicitation, when crossed with the safety bubble, potentially becomes a civil infraction.
The ACLU is clear that this legislation creates intolerably broad restrictions upon free speech, and that it will not withstand constitutional challenge. Burgess says the ordinance targets very specific uncivil behaviors. My money's on the ACLU.
Whether the moving safety bubble lives on or not, the law will face legal challenge. But Tim Burgess should make good on his word. If, as he said in a televised public forum, the bubble does not exist as a matter of legislative intent, he needs to make it go away.