LANCING, MI — For Michigan exotic dancers who like the to show skin, less may well become more – licensing fees, that is. State lawmakers, always on the look-out for ways to extract tax money from working citizens, have hit upon the bright idea that strippers who shed their tops should support the tax coffers by paying $250 for a nude dancer’s license.
Sen. Ray Basham [D-Taylor] is the mastermind behind the proposed legislation, which would permit counties to assess the fee.
Unsurprisingly, dancers are less than enthusiastic about the idea, with many fretting that it could impact their fiscal bottom line during an especially economically challenging time.
Basham shrugs money concerns aside, insisting that the issue is safety, citing the 2007 death by cocaine overdose of an underage dancer on her second night of work at a Lincoln Park club. Half of the money collected from the fee would go toward the participating municipality’s police department, with the remaining half being distributed to anti-domestic violence agencies.
“We don’t need teenagers dying,” he told the The Flint Journal.
The fee would not protect just the “safety” of strippers, however. The annual fee would also be required of bartenders, wait staff, dishwashers and janitors who find employment at an adult club.
According to the The Flint Journal, former Flint police vice sergeant Jim McLellan welcomes the fee, contending that it’s an idea whose time is long overdue. McLellan contends that he frequently found underage dancers working in Flint strip clubs and asked the city attorney about the possibility of requiring permits as many as seven years ago.
McLellan believes that fee would be useful in keeping both minors and convicted prostitutes off the dance floors.
“It won’t be popular,” McLellan foretells, “but it’s an industry that has no control in Flint.”
