City Council to vote on 'sidewalk behavior' bill today

The controversial quality-of-life ordinance prohibiting many activities on city sidewalks is expected to pass into law. If everything goes as expected in City Council today, it will soon be illegal to ride a bike, hand out leaflets or sit for a prolonged period of time on a sidewalk in the city of Philadelphia. As today is the last session of Council before its summer recess, months of debate, compromise and disagreement will come to a head with a planned vote on Council President John Street's controversial "sidewalk-behavior" ordinance. The bill, first introduced last December, aims to bring more order to the city by criminalizing many forms of public behavior that regularly take place on sidewalks in Center City and neighborhood business districts. Sitting on the sidewalk for more than a half-hour, selling "objectionable materials" and even skateboarding would result in fines of anywhere from $20 to $300 per offense. Street's proposal -- which has won the support of most of Council and of Mayor Ed Rendell -- takes particular aim at the homeless by establishing fines for "aggressive panhandling," which includes attempts to solicit money near automatic-teller machines and bank entrances. After a marathon Council session last Wednesday -- at which various Council members dozed off, giggled uncontrollably and engaged in finger-pointing matches -- the 17-member committee finally passed the bill by a 14-3 vote at 1:20 Thursday morning. Dissenting from the majority opinion were West Philadelphia Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell and at-large Council members David Cohen and Angel Ortiz. Blackwell, whose district includes University City, said she disagreed with the bill "from beginning to end." "Right now it says that if you're more than 12 years old, you can't ride your bike on the sidewalk," she said, adding rollerskating and sitting down to the list of punishable offenses. "It's going to make life difficult for everybody." In order to combat opposition to the ordinance from community groups and Council members, the bill's sponsors pushed through a series of amendments during last week's contentious talks aimed at mitigating the legislation's effects. One of Street's amendments said that "no person shall be imprisoned for violating" the new rules. Instead, violators will face fines. At-large Councilwoman Happy Fernandez said that she plans to vote for the bill as amended. Fernandez was successful in including an amendment to fund "outreach workers" to work with the city's homeless, as opposed to dealing with them solely through the police. She said that an additional $6 million in city funds had been pledged for the effort. "I have the mayor's word that he will support the funding for the services," she said. Blackwell was skeptical. "For all those people who need drug addiction or mental health [help], there is no money for them," she said. "It is a negative bill that hurts the victims." Deputy Mayor Kevin Feeley said that while the funds would be appropriated under a separate measure later this year, the administration was committed to change. "For the first time in a decade, the city is going to fund -- at significant cost -- [additional] services for the homeless," he said, indicating that between $5 million and $7 million would be added to the $18 million the city already spends on programs for the homeless. Feeley also countered the persistent charge that the ordinance "criminalizes" homelessness. Instead, he said that it is meant to address primarily the small number of "shelter-resistant" homeless people who live on the streets of Center City. "They're almost impossible to reason with and impossible to reach out to," he said. "While you want to address the needs of the people who need help, you can't allow those 300 to 500 people to dictate life on the street." However, the defeat of one of Fernandez's other proposed amendments may fuel a future challenge to the ordinance. Fernandez had proposed that the clause prohibiting the distribution of handbills within eight feet of a building be removed, for fear of a court challenge on the first amendment right of free speech. "The reason why I wanted to take that out is to protect the bill," she said. "I'm hoping we can get that out in the fall." John Feinberg, a legislative assistant at the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the ordinance will likely face judicial scrutiny. "Aside from the bad policy aspects of the bill, it's unconstitutional," he said, citing the bill's restrictions on free speech. "It's out of whack." Feinberg also pointed to the clause prohibiting people from sitting or lying down on the sidewalk as an "unnecessarily harsh attack on the homeless." Feinberg said that an Ohio court's recent decision to invalidate a similar ordinance in Cincinnati could serve as a "model" for legal action in this case. Carol Scheman, Penn's vice president for government, community and public affairs, expects the ordinance -- which is focused on the Center City area -- to be contested if it is not applied uniformly around Philadelphia. "We think that if an ordinance is unevenly applied that it could not work," she said. "There are a lot of problems with the bill and I think John Street recognizes that." Street did not return several calls for comment. However, despite the controversies over funding for the homeless and first amendment rights, the issue of the bill's future effectiveness is still up in the air. "The police department has many things to do and moving people off sidewalks is not one of them," Penn School of Social Work Professor Dennis Culhane said. "That's going to require more resources than is likely to be made available." Blackwell also doubted the Philadelphia Police Department's ability to uphold the ordinance. "I believe that the police would have to carry manuals to enforce this law rather than fight the robbers, rapists and muggers out there," she said.