TAMPA, FL – Hillsborough County Commissioners postponed until September a vote on whether to require topless dancers and other employees of sexually-oriented businesses to purchase licenses and conform to a list of proposed regulations.Beyond requiring licenses of employees and owners of adult businesses, other proposed regulations include size requirements for the rooms in which dancers perform, lighting standards for adult theaters and prohibition of physical contact between patrons and dancers at “bikini bars” that offer alcoholic beverages.
At a hearing Wednesday, county officials argued that adult businesses create a slate of negative secondary effects, including increased crime rates, spread of disease, and decreased the property values.
Tampa-based attorney Luke Lirot and his witnesses, however, say the county’s reasoning is based on bad data, poor analysis, and flawed logic, according to a report posted to the St. Petersburg Times website.
“What I have found in reviewing the studies,” Lirot said of the reports cited by the County, “is that the vast majority of these are simply junk science.”
Lirot, who counts several owners of Tampa Bay area adult businesses among his clients, said the county’s analysis was shallow and its assumptions were wrong.
Terry Danner, chairman of the Saint Leo University department of criminology, said that in a review of crime statistics from 32 cities of similar size, including Tampa, he could identify no trends suggesting a correlation between the presence of adult businesses and an increase in crime in surrounding areas.
According to Danner, one study showed a high concentration of crime in the area surrounding Raymond James Stadium during Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL home games. Under the County’s reasoning, Danner notes, football games would be blamed for an increase in crime, rather than the gathering of a large number of people, some consuming alcohol.
Also appearing at the meeting was Scott Bergthold, an attorney whose Chattanooga, TN-based law firm has worked with a number of local-level governments to “strengthen and defend their public nudity laws,” according to the Times.
Bergthold assured the assembled Commissioners that the county had no obligation to compare crime rates near sexually-oriented businesses to those of other businesses, and can rely on “any information reasonably believed to be relevant.”
The meeting was well-attended, a fact that the Times attributed to a mailing campaign conducted by Commissioner Ronda Storms, in which 6,000 people received letters encouraging them to attend.
“People have an opportunity and a right to know that we are going to be doing this,” Storms said in justifying the mass-mailing, for which the cost of postage alone totaled more than $1,900.
According to the Times, Storms’ letter referenced a recent arrest of the ex-wife and daughter of local strip club owner Joe Redner on prostitution charges, and the arrest of an adult book store owner on charges of child pornography possession.
Redner himself spoke at the meeting, as well, arguing that the regulations will cost the County millions in legal costs stemming from the inevitable legal challenges and serve as distraction from the county’s more urgent concerns.
“Overcrowded schools, gridlocked traffic, and environmental rape,” Redner said, according to the Times. “That’s what you should be dealing with.”
