In a single week, Mayor Greg Nickels’s office went from giddy to
galled. After last week’s Operation Sobering Thought—a $52,000
Seattle Police Department undercover sting operation that caught 15
local bars admitting and serving minors, overserving, and (sort of)
allowing guns into clubs [“The Saturday Night Massacre,” Josh Feit,
Sept 13]—Nickels believed Council Member Sally Clark’s version of
his nightclub license proposal was a done deal. That proposal would
have forced clubs to get a nightclub license that the mayor’s
Department of Executive Administration could deny or revoke at its
discretion, giving the executive sweeping authority to shut down
clubs.
Operation Sobering Thought had shown, Nickels thought, that “some
clubs in Seattle are not even following basic liquor laws,” according
to Nickels spokesman Martin McOmber. “The fact is they were serving
minors and letting people into clubs with weapons. That is deeply
troubling.”
On September 17, however, the city council voted 6–3 for
license legislation that was so watered-down by crafty opponents of the
proposal, including Jean Godden, that it didn’t even include a
license.
Godden, who completely outmaneuvered license proponent Clark, says
the heavy-handed sting (which she believes “may have violated people’s
civil rights”) made her dislike the license idea even more than she
already had. She says it demonstrated that the city already has laws on
the books to deal with problems in clubs.
On September 13, Godden drafted a last-minute amendment to Clark’s
proposal that deferred a vote on the license for a year. It would also
empower a nightlife commission to gather data and details about
violence in clubs and report back to the council on whether there needs
to be a license at all. The vote thus put power where opponents of the
licensing scheme wanted it all along—in the hands of a group that
will include nightlife industry representatives and neighborhood
representatives, not in the hands of the mayor. “The commission could
have been ignored in the mayor’s original scheme,” Council President
Nick Licata—who voted for the amendment before voting for the
final legislation—says. “What it needed was to get the attention
of mayor and council, and the only way to do that was to make our vote
come after their report.”
As Peter Steinbrueck, the harshest critic of the license (he
provided a key fifth vote for the amendment before voting against the
final legislation), said: “In all of this discussion, I’ve never been
given any details about violence inside clubs. Should we make
Macy’s or McDonald’s get a license?” he asked, referring to the
violence that has taken place outside those establishments at Third
Avenue and Pine Street. His humorous and spot-on take got raucous
applause from the nightclub workers who had packed the hearing. They
also cheered loudly when Godden’s amendment passed, prompting Clark to
turn red.
Council President Licata had actually floated a version of Godden’s
amendment informally a few weeks ago, but found no traction for it.
However, with Godden suddenly taking action, Licata and Richard
Conlin—who, Conlin says, “were not really excited about the
license” although they both planned to vote for it—found a way to
add Godden’s vote to the count in favor of the legislation, giving the
new proposal a commanding six-vote majority. (Steinbrueck along with
Tom Rasmussen and Richard McIver—who raised concerns about the
city’s history of discriminating against black clubs—voted
no.)
“Six votes sends a strong message to the mayor that the council is
united,” Licata says. “He can’t veto this ordinance.”
And Nickels, who already symbolically refused to sign two ordinances
about noise and overcrowding in clubs that some on the council hoped
would supercede the license idea, is definitely mad about Monday’s
vote. A Nickels press release issued immediately after the vote said,
“Voting ‘maybe’ won’t ensure that we have a safe and vibrant nightlife
in Seattle.”
“Voting ‘maybe'” is actually a positive spin. Really, the council
voted no. “There’s no license,” Seattle Nightlife and Music Association
lobbyist Tim Hatley said after the somewhat confusing hearing.
The council also voted “no” on handing the mayor an inordinate
amount of power to close private businesses. That is good news to
people like Guy Godefroy, a manager at Trinity nightclub in Pioneer
Square, who testified against the license at the hearing. “Power is
much easier to give than take away,” he told the council. “I might not
mistrust this council and this mayor, but someone could misuse this in
the future.” 
