The most significant battle on the First Amendment front this year gets fought today as the Tampa City Council decides whether to ban lap dancing or not. The Tampa Tribune reports:
"In a city convinced that fighting the sex industry is good business, a decision is due today on banning contact at adult clubs," says the Tribune.
"When Mayor Dick Greco eyes the Big Apple, he sees a blueprint for a new Tampa. Peep shows and nude clubs vanished from Times Square under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's legislative assault. Panhandlers disappeared, and prostitutes were jailed in record numbers in a petty crime crackdown.
" 'I think Giuliani's doing a great job," Greco said. "All over the country, people are talking about it."
The paper reports that, in what promises to be a heated debate, hundreds [actually, thousands] will pack the Tampa Convention Center today to attack or defend a city plan to make nude entertainers stay six feet away from their customers and one another.
Officials say the ordinance is to stem crime and the transmission of disease. 'We are the only city in the Tampa Bay area that allows this,' Greco said. The battle prompted adult entertainers to testify for six hours Nov. 18. It now has a Tampa minister organizing a telephone bank to rally support for the city.
"Although it shapes up as one of the livelier clashes between the adult entertainment industry and the city, it's not the first," says the report. "Greco and the Tampa City Council have hammered away at sex-related businesses for years.
"In 1996, Tampa sued 10 adult clubs, saying they violated city laws because they were on land not zoned for adult businesses. Most of those lawsuits are still in the courts, but three of the clubs have closed. Three weeks ago, the city filed zoning lawsuits against three more adult clubs.
"In 1998, police began stepping up investigations of massage parlors and lingerie modeling studios. The owners of 39 licensed body scrub shops were even given notice they were being reclassified under bathhouse codes. The new classification made workers apply for a license, take a 70-hour course on the theory of bath and wear surgical gowns when bathing clients. Owners said the city would cripple business. Many were more than crippled. They're gone.
"More than 70 massage parlors and lingerie modeling studios existed two years ago. Now there are 18, police Lt. Jane Castor said. Like New York, Tampa has targeted the world's oldest profession. In 1996, the city made 566 prostitution cases, some with multiple defendants. That number rose to 882 in 1997 and 901 in 1998. Club owners and city police agree that Tampa has a national reputation for its adult entertainment. Mons Venus owner Joe Redner has said cabbies tell him his club is a top destination from Tampa International Airport.
"Like Giuliani's foes, Redner contends Greco is attempting to take away the civil liberties of customers and dancers without proving the public is being harmed. 'We've been doing it [lap dancing] for over 15 years,' Redner said. 'You demonstrate the harm.'
"Club owners scoff at the contention that lap dancing spreads disease. But city officials point to police videotape they say shows sex acts between dancers and also involving customers - evidence of a health risk and illegal activity. Club owners say the city should make arrests in individual cases, not impose a sweeping ordinance.
"The adult entertainment industry points to the millions of dollars spent in local clubs. City officials say those same nude clubs jeopardize business expansions in Tampa. Jay Miller, executive vice president of Steiner & Associates, is bringing a $63 million retail and entertainment complex called Centro Ybor to the city's Latin Quarter.
"The complex of stores, eateries and movie theaters doesn't mesh with adult entertainment, Miller said, and the company was worried that Redner's Club Flamingo was operating nearby. 'Our prospective customers are national retailers,' Miller said. 'We expressed concern to the mayor that the destination would become more inclined to adult entertainment.'
"In January, the city won a legal victory when a circuit judge ordered an end to nude dancing at Club Flamingo.
"Despite Tampa's crackdowns on massage parlors and lingerie shops, nude dance clubs continue to open. City Attorney James Palermo said only 16 adult clubs are operating on parcels zoned for adult business. About 30 are operating illegally, he said. The city must file lawsuits to make them move the business or clothe their dancers, and those lawsuits take years.
"While dancers, club owners and customers bombarded the city council two weeks ago, the city has been working to get its message out that police need a new tool to combat crime in adult clubs. On Monday, Greco showed a group of ministers the videotape it will air at today's meeting.
"After watching the tape, the Rev. Randy White of Without Walls International Church said he felt compelled to take a vocal stand. 'I was totally shocked. This is hard- core pornography,' White said. 'Like a lot of of people, I thought these clubs featured dancers who were partially clad,' he said. 'But this tape showed something much, much worse. Masturbation, oral sex, the use of sex toys, three and four people involved at the same time.'
"Hal King, owner of the Deja Vu Showgirls rebuts the city's videotaped case, saying the acts depicted in his club were simulated. The videotape so disturbed White, however, that he and his wife, Paula, dipped into their personal funds to pay for a full-page ad in today's Tampa Tribune. It cost nearly $10,000. He also mobilized church ministerial students, staff and other volunteers to call 40,000 Tampa residents to rally support for the proposed ordinance.
After the first public hearing, Redner vowed to 'wave the flag' for the Constitution over what he sees as an attack on civil liberties. But Monsignor Laurence Higgins of St. Lawrence Catholic Church saw the police videotape. "Something has to be done about it.," he said.
Mike Ross, our reporter on the scene, is in Tampa. Ross said as of 10 am this morning, he counted 32 news vehicles outside the Tampa Convention Center.
Ross: "There's a march going on right now. Dancers are marching from city hall down to the convention center. There's expected to be about 30,000 people at this thing [a far cry from the "hundreds" reported by the Tribune]. The newspapers and every radio show you listen to are all talking about this. As far as the Wages & Sin Tribune story goes, the problem is that they're combining the lingerie shops and massage parlors with us. The video guys and the dance clubs are constitutionally protected. We're not hookers and whores and prostitutes. We're doing what's constitutionally protected. This morning I spent about two hours trying to find out what the procedures are for a ballot referendum.
"Yesterday I met with some club owners. We talked about some options as to what's going to happen here. If the city council passes this thing we have to be prepared. What we've done is come up with a couple of options. The attorneys are Luke Lirot, John McKay and Lou Sirkin. Today at city hall Lou Sirkin will be giving a presentation. I have one that will talk about the pluses and minuses of where some of the dollars and cents go, how much money is raised; there's an economic expert going to be here. There's a dance expert going to be here today.
"This morning I spent time in city hall asking about the procedures for a ballot referendum. They're doing one of the scarecrow and the Wizard of Oz-things where they point this is the way to go. A referendum is something that's definitely in Florida law, but nobody in Tampa will give us the straight scoop. I don't know if it's because I've been having attorneys call, or because I've been having people do petition-signature stuff call, or because I was sitting in the office, but no one will meet with us. No one will tell us the process. No one will give us documents. The only document I was given was a copy of the city charter. Inside the city charter there is a one paragraph description of what we can do. So when I started to ask for some real defining concepts, the attorneys were busy, they were out of the office, etc. They all know what's going on because I said when this thing passes we have some options.
"On Monday the religious community got all bent out of shape and set up a phone tree. That's why the papers and press are reporting that there's going to be 30,000 people."
Ross says the lap dance issue has been totally blown out of proportion. "That's why we can't get it back into focus," he says. Ross says attorney Lirot went to court this morning to file an injunction against having the 'simulated' video tape referred to in the Tribune piece from being shown at the council meeting. "You don't want to have 30,000 people there and watching them covering their daughters' eyes. You know what would happen. The press would eat this up alive."
Ross said the council meeting is expected to go to at least 9 this evening. "It's going to be a very long day," he says. "It's now known as lap dancing day in Tampa." Ross said expect court challenges and a restraining order. Ross said most of the local polls are running even on the issue. "It's so close I'm going to ask that this be put on the ballot," Ross said. "The community is kind of tied." Ross relates a story that he got into a conversation with the owner of a hotel where he's staying at. The owner said he took his mother, 75, into one of the clubs because she wanted to know what was going on. "One of the girls bent down and did the trick with the dollar bill, picking it up with her pussy," Ross relates. "The mother instead of being offended, asked the dancer how she did that and wondered if she could get lessons."
Regarding procedures for a referendum, Ross says he's discovering that Tampa has no statutes, codes, ordinances, or regulatory policies. "They have nothing," Ross says. "In absence of that, you use state law. In Florida you have up to four years to qualify an initiative for the process. We obviously can't do that in four years. Other than the fact that this is violating our constitutional rights, more importantly, all these businesses will be out of business in 60 days or 120 days if they can't continue to do business in the fashion that we're doing it now. We're going to wind up in court tomorrow dealing with several different issues. Dancers are going to be suing. Some of the club owners are going to be suing. I'm working with attorneys to bring up some cases where consumers are having their rights violated.
"The way the Baby Tam case was set up, there has to be a process set up for us to appeal. There's no way for us to appeal this except to go to court. The upshot of this is I expect to see a half dozen lawsuits tomorrow. I don't know how successful they're going to be. But the important point is that there's three attorneys working on this and one lobbyist."
