Naked City
The press have done a good job tracking campaign contributions around the isolated incident of Rick's strip-club rezone. What they've missed--and are failing to talk about--is the ongoing and more suspect relationship between Rick's and the city council.
Like clockwork, year after year in late April or early May, the council passes a moratorium on building new strip clubs in Seattle--surely a boon to Rick's owner Frank Colacurcio Jr., who reaps more profits from the lack of local competition than he ever will from a single parking-lot rezone. And like clockwork in April or May, Colacurcio and his lawyer Gilbert Levy (and on one occasion Colacurcio associate Gil Conte) make donations to council members.
For example: Levy contributed $600 to Heidi Wills on April 27, 2001--the moratorium was signed into law on April 30, 2001. Levy contributed $600 to Jim Compton on April 18, 2002--the moratorium was passed on April 22, 2002. Colacurcio and Conte each donated $250 on April 28, 2000--the moratorium had been introduced four days earlier, and it passed on May 8, 2000.
While former Seattle Ethics and Elections commissioner Timothy Burgess has gotten press for calling on council members to return this year's Colacurcio-related donations because he believes the money is symbolic of former illegal activity (Nicastro caved and announced that she would return the dough), the public oughta consider something else that may very well be illegal today: a council-enforced monopoly on a legal business. You can't have it both ways, Seattle. You can't scream when a strip club owner makes donations that seem connected to a sole parking-lot expansion, while ignoring the fact that the same folks make donations that seem connected to keeping others from opening competing clubs.
The perpetual "moratorium" is justified year after year when the city says it is still waiting for the results of a study. The perpetually overdue study is apparently grappling with questions about the impacts that strip clubs have on neighborhoods. Fed up with covering the issue year after year, I sicced a scrappy intern on it last year. Here's what he reported:
"In what has become a yearly routine, the city council renewed Seattle's Strip Club Moratorium on Monday, April 22, in an 8-0 vote. Discussed, passed, and forgotten in less time than a quarter buys at the Lusty Lady, the 'temporary' moratorium extends Seattle's... ban on new strip clubs for another year, pending further 'analysis and evaluation.' According to city council staffer Jill Berkey, last year's findings were 'pretty brief.' In fact, there weren't any."
There's no doubt that, as was first reported in the community paper the Seattle Sun, an abundance of suspect donations flowed to council prior to this year's rezone vote. (Both the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission and the FBI have now taken an interest.) But Seattle needs to know that donations connected to Colacurcio seem suspect for another reason: an anti-small-business policy perpetuated year after year by the council, bought and paid for by the same small group of local businessmen.
