Repeal the TDO
On Monday March 25, Mayor Greg Nickels broke a campaign promise.
In campaign mode last year, Nickels said he would repeal the Teen Dance Ordinance and replace it with the Seattle City Council-endorsed All Ages Dance Ordinance (AADO). The council passed the AADO back in August 2000--getting rid of the TDO's overreaching insurance requirements, nixing a prohibitive cop security provision, and throwing out its stupid age limits. Former Mayor Paul Schell vetoed the council legislation, but candidate Nickels told music activists from JAMPAC that he was all for the groovy AADO.
However, in a closed city council executive session last Monday, March 25, City Attorney Tom Carr (currently shopping a Nickels-endorsed dance ordinance) told the city not to go for JAMPAC's latest offer. The previous Friday, the music industry activists said they would drop their federal lawsuit against the TDO if the city passed the AADO.
"We offered them a peaceful way out of [the lawsuit]," says JAMPAC attorney David Osgood, "so everyone could walk away a winner. That ain't gonna happen now."
Indeed, rather than simply putting the AADO into play, like he promised last year, Nickels is backing a lame rewrite of the AADO that seems a lot like the TDO.
"This is not what I proposed," says Council Member Richard Conlin, the city council's point man on the TDO repeal. (Conlin drafted the AADO in August 2000, after heading up an 18-month public process--drawing largely on the input of music industry activists.)
Conlin is right about the new Nickels-backed proposal. The new proposal brings back the $1 million insurance and some prohibitive security requirements, nixes a music industry appeals process, and, by tweaking the definition of a "concert," adds even broader regulations than those in the dreaded TDO.
Nickels spokesperson Marianne Bichsel says unconvincingly: "This is substantively similar to the AADO. There are minor differences."
"She has it backwards," says JAMPAC board member David Meinert. "It's substantively different from the AADO, and it's a slap in the face to the music community that supported Nickels."
It's also a slap in the face to voters, who want our politicians to lead. By offering up his decoy proposal, Nickels is insuring that the issue will be decided by a judge, rather than by city hall.
"We would rather work through the legislative process than through the courts," Meinert says. "But get real--let's talk about what we've been talking about for months: the AADO, not this other thing. What they're proposing is worse than the TDO."
What they're proposing is also a broken campaign promise. If you agree, call the mayor's office at 684-8853.
