Madison to give downtown panhandlers a pass

City says it hasn’t enforced ban in years.

The Madison Common Council is poised to repeal its ordinance against panhandling in its entirely. Good news for the scam artists who prey on the gullible in a town where human services is the first order of business. Bad news for Poland and France — I mean, for State Street merchants.

City Attorney Mike Haas says the city has no choice, citing the U.S. Supreme Court decision Reed v. Town of Gilbert AZ (2015). Although it ruled on signage, not panhandling, it held that government regulation of speech must be content-neutral. Panhandling, ergo, is speech. Protected speech.

City Attorney Haas told us, “Enforcing or keeping the panhandling ordinance would mean that the City could also prohibit individuals from evangelizing or asking for contributions for their favorite candidate.” In any case, says Haas, the city has not enforced the ordinance “in years.”

“If either panhandling or political fundraising is done aggressively, the individual can be cited for disorderly conduct or harassment, but the Supreme Court has largely concluded that the government cannot prevent people from merely saying certain words and permitting other speech.”

— City atty Mike Haas to the Werkes

The Public Safety Review Committee will chew over the repeal 5 p.m. Wednesday 09-13-23 (watch on line and comment here) before it goes to alders for a final vote 09-19-23.

Median strip begging still banned, supposedly

Begging — or politicking or commercial advertising or street theater — remains illegal on the median strips of city streets. Ordinance 12.35 does read as “content neutral.” It declares that it is “prima facie evidence of a violation of this section if a person stays on the median through two consecutive opportunities to cross the highway in a legal manner … [to] include a change in the traffic control signal or lack of traffic, as applicable.”

Problem is, the ban on median strip begging is little enforced. Beggars have populated intersections here on the west side all summer, often three of the four corners at Whitney and Odana Road, for one example.

Is the city fighting hard enough?

This is a qualify of life issue. A foretaste of San Francisco. A Columbia Law Review article the City cites notes that ordinances prohibiting politicking around polling places have been upheld. That’s the law in Madison WI, too, New York City’s ban on begging in the subways is probably constitutional, the law review article holds, because subway riders are “hostage” to the location. 

Guess who wrote Reed v Gilbert. Justice Clarence Thomas! The decision was unanimous but liberal Justice Elena Kagan cautioned “As the years go by, courts will discover that thousands of towns have ordinances, many of them entirely reasonable. The repeal of Madison’s panhandling ban is sponsored by some of the Council’s most radical left members: Yannette Figueroa Cole, Juliana R. Bennett, MGR Govindarajan, and Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford. Is that significant?

Blaska’s Bottom Line: On County Board, lawyers told Blaska his proposed merger of the city and county health departments, as he wrote it, was illegal. Blaska told the lawyers to defend it while the law catches up with what we’re doing.

How do YOU handle panhandlers?