COLUMBUS, OH — The Ohio State House is expected to vote soon on legislation that would impose new restrictions on the state’s strip clubs and other sexually oriented businesses. The bill is being pushed by the anti-porn activist group Citizens for Community Values and its leader Phil Burress.The bill, SB 16, would impose restrictions concerning the hours of operation for sexually oriented businesses and prohibit strip club patrons from “knowingly” touching any club employee “while that employee is nude or seminude.” The measure further holds that no employee who “who regularly appears nude or seminude on the premises…shall knowingly be or remain within six feet of any patron.”
The legislation is strongly opposed by the National Association of Club Executives (NACE), the director of which hand-delivered a letter to Ohio House Speaker Jon Husted’s office Monday, urging the legislature to hold three committee hearings on the bill, rather than send the bill directly to the House floor for a vote.
“To deny the people of Ohio adequate time to testify in opposition to it would be an unprecedented attack on democracy itself,” wrote NACE executive director Angelina Spencer in the letter, according to Youngstown, Ohio-based newspaper, The Vindicator.
Addressing reporters following her delivery of the letter, Spencer said the legislation is being “railroaded” by lawmakers who are acting out of “political fear.”
“If you vote without hearings on this statewide regulation, you are, in essence, voting against Ohio jobs, tax revenues, the idea that municipalities can govern themselves, and the democratic process,” asserted Spencer, according to the Vindicator.
Husted indicated that the House was likely to forge ahead with a vote, sooner rather than later.
“It’s time to probably either act or declare our intentions one way or another,” said Husted at a press conference Monday afternoon. “I suspect [the bill] will have overwhelming bipartisan support.”
Husted spokesperson Karen Tabor, however, said that she “didn’t anticipate” that the House would suspend a House rule requiring three committee hearings on the bill prior to a vote from the floor. Tabor said the bill has not yet been referred to a House committee, but said that an initial hearing could be held this week, once the bill has been referred to a House committee.
SB 16 was approved by the Ohio Senate last week, following what CCV critics, including several senators, considered strong-arm tactics being employed by the CCV.
According to The Athens News, prior to a session held last Tuesday, Senator Larry Mumper (R-Marion) said that the bill was a waste of time, violated the principle of “home rule,” and indicated that he didn’t approve of the CCV bullying lawmakers in order to push the legislation along.
“I wasn’t happy with some of the tactics of the group that was supporting the bill,” said Mumper. “They made overt comments to some of our members, and I think campaigned against one or two of them.”
Mumper added that a year ago the Senate “told these folks we weren’t going to deal with them, but I don’t know why we didn’t do it this time.”
Oddly enough, however, just hours prior to making those comments, Mumper voted in favor of the bill, much to the surprise of peers who had heard him voice numerous complaints about it during hearings held by the Senate’s government committee.
During hearings, CCV lobbyist Barry Sheets reportedly received a rough welcome from several Senators who did not see the need for, or purpose of, the new bill – especially given that Ohio just last year passed a bill empowering local governments to impose stricter restraints on strip clubs as they saw fit.
Senator Tom Niehaus (R-District 14) reportedly told Sheets that he didn’t know of anyone beyond the CCV that wanted the bill to pass.
Senator John Boccieri, (D-District 33) voiced even harsher criticism of the CCV, dismissing the group as “stripper experts,” and asserting that the CCV’s fixation on issues like gay marriage and strip clubs distracts the legislature from more pressing concerns such as domestic violence and poverty.
Just like Mumper, however, both Niehaus and Boccieri eventually voted in support of the measure, leading the bill to be passed along to the full Senate for a vote.
“I lost my voice,” Mumper joked about his reversal, according to the Athens News. Mumper then indicated that he had responded to pressure from the Senate’s Republican leadership, stating that “It’s pretty obvious that the folks wanted this bill to be part of the floor session today.”
In all, five senators on the nine member government committee panel – Mumper, Niehaus, and Boccieri, plus Democrats Capri Cafaro (District 32) and Shirley Smith (District 21) – voiced opposition to the bill during hearings, but only one (Smith) actually voted against forwarding the bill to the full Senate.
“I could not understand that,” said Smith afterward. “I was absolutely, totally surprised.”
The bill went on to be approved by a 20-8 vote in the full Senate, with Mumper reversing his earlier vote and casting it as part of the disapproving minority, which sends the measure to the House for a vote.
After Sheet’s testimony, Smith tried to offer her colleagues an easy way out, by suggesting the bill be tabled, a means of driving a stake through legislation without any members having to go on record as opposed, and a popular face-saving method within legislatures at all levels of government. When the vote was called to table SB 16, however, only two of her fellow Democrats joined Smith’s call to shelve the measure.
In defending his thumbs-up vote on the bill, Boccieri echoed Mumper’s comments, saying that it was “very clear that the Senate president wanted to move this bill, and it was going irrespective.”
“They were not permitting any amendments to be offered on this legislation,” added Boccieri, “It was very clear.”
Senate President Bill Harris denied that he engaged in any pressuring or intimidation tactics, but didn’t offer much explanation for why he and other Senate Republicans had voted to approve legislation that they clearly had serious reservations about.
“The petition was signed by an adequate number of voters of the state of Ohio that expressed their position that they wanted to have considered by the Legislature an initiative in this capacity,” Harris said. “That’s what we’ve done.”
At the same time, Harris was not exactly overflowing with praise for Burress and the CCV. Asked his opinion of Burress, Harris replied “My personal practice is that if I can’t say something good about a person, I don’t say anything,” according to the Athens News.
In her letter to Speaker Husted, Spencer expresses hope that members of the House do not find themselves responding to political pressure as the Senate appears to have done last week.
“I hope the proposed reduced hearing schedule is not a tactic to shield House members from the same self-inflicted embarrassment that the Senate experienced last week,” Spencer wrote. “It was clear from the testimony presented to the Senate committee, and the questions asked by committee members, that most who voted for this bill did so because of pressure from leadership and fear of the religious right.”
According to a blog post on “Openers,” the politics blog on the website for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Keith Dailey, a spokesman for Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, said that Strickland has not decided whether he will sign the bill, should it be passed by the House.
