We Mean it This Time

CITY COMMISSIONER Nick Fish and Mayor Sam Adams finally stood
up to the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) last week, telling a private
meeting composed primarily of PBA members there will be no new version
of the controversial sit-lie law.

The law, which outlawed sitting and lying on the sidewalk during the
day and was predominantly enforced against homeless people, has been
through several different iterations over the years. In June, police
stopped enforcement after Judge Stephen Bushong ruled that a version of
the law that had been in place since August 2007 was unconstitutional
[“Sit-Lie Dies,” News, July 2].

Since then, the mayor’s office has been sending mixed messages about
a possible resurrection of the law in yet another form. “The public
doesn’t care that this is our fourth pass at trying to craft this law,”
Adams’ chief of staff, Tom Miller, told the Mercury in August.
“The public cares about getting this issue right.”

The PBA and its members have always been a vocal minority calling
for successive versions of the law, but this time, nearly 440
Portlanders joined a Facebook group called “The Sit-Lie Ordinance Is
Unconstitutional. Really. Stop Trying to Fix It…” holding city hall
phone-ins and sidewalk picnics in opposition to its renewal [“Make
Picnic Not War,” News, Aug 27].

Fish, a former civil rights attorney, and Adams, who has until
recently been a tacit supporter of sit-lie laws, appear to have heard
the outcry. They told 80 business leaders gathered at a meeting room at
Pioneer Courthouse Square on Friday, September 11, that council now
plans to come up with a “Free Sidewalk Plan,” putting all existing
disability access and fire code laws around sidewalk access under one
banner.

“It needs to be easy to understand, constitutional, and legal,” said
Adams. But the era of end-runs around the constitution to target
homeless people is at an end.

“I think we do more harm seesawing back and forth between creating
new ordinances and having them declared illegal,” said the mayor. “The
new package probably won’t be as broad as you want, but let’s get
something stable that works.”

“I would be less than candid if I didn’t acknowledge that this is
not going to be sit-lie two,” said Fish.

The business leaders weren’t thrilled, asking City Attorney Linda
Meng if there weren’t ways around the state constitution. “Can’t we
make all of downtown a park?” asked one business owner—Meng said
the courts would see through the obvious attempt to target “behavior we
don’t like.”

“How can we change the state constitution?” asked another business
owner. Meng said that has been tried before and such attempts have
repeatedly failed.

“I’m wondering if we’ve looked at the option of privatizing the
sidewalks?” asked another. But that’s out, Meng said, because
“sidewalks are historically the quintessential areas of free expression
in this country.”

Could we not emulate San Diego, asked another business owner? “They
can’t get in your face there. They can’t panhandle, they just sort of
shake their cup, and it’s very quiet,” he said. “Panhandling is
protected free expression under the constitution,” responded Meng.

Ultimately however, the business leaders took their medicine.
“Because I’m not getting a lot of ‘hell no’s’ from you,” said Adams,
“I’m going to assume that you’re quietly saying ‘hell yes.’ I do want
to emphasize that we are Portland, and we want a healthy functioning
place that people are striving to get to.”

It was the end of a hard week for the PBA. Vice President of
Downtown Services Mike Kuykendall accused the city’s homeless advocacy
newspaper, Street Roots, of “yellow journalism” on Thursday,
September 10, and pulled the PBA’s advertising following an editorial
saying the city was “tired of wasting time with petty ordinances about
sidewalks when we could be using our collective energy to push for poor
folks to have access to health care and housing.”

Yellow or not, Fish and Adams echoed Street Roots‘ line in
their meeting with PBA members. “The mayor and I have a very tough hand
[to play] right now,” said Fish. “[Portland is] in the top five in
hunger, homelessness, and unemployment nationally, and there is an
enormous strain on the system. More than 1,600 people a night are
sleeping outside, and I don’t have a place for them. So there is a
larger problem, and in addition to addressing the sidewalks, I hope we
can also get your ideas on solving that problem as well.”

The city attorney’s office now expects to have its Free Sidewalk
Plan ready in less than 60 days. Check blogtown.portlandmercury.com for updates.