From today’s b, the paper:

Baltimore City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has proposed a live-entertainment licensing bill that would reinvent the process for granting venues the right to put on live entertainment, including bands, dance parties, plays and just about everything but stripping. She says the bill would do away with the clunky zoning program as the means for deeming whether someone can have a guy playing fiddle at his coffee shop on a Thursday at 3 p.m., and instead move to a licensing system where a board decides whether the venue owner is fit for the fiddler.
Currently, sites in the city either are or aren’t zoned for live entertainment. But we’ve all been to shows at venues that aren’t zoned for that; many of them have sought special permission to book gigs (though some are bending the rules).

When yours truly took a stroll down to City Hall (in a thrift-store suit and tie) to chat with council Policy and Communications Director Ryan O’Doherty and Legislative Director Andrew Smullian, I was assured that this bill was a vehicle for weighing community concerns (noise pollution; having a place to park that ’88 Cavalier; not letting the kids see ravers make out) while bolstering middle-class-friendly entertainment. They seemed mostly concerned with downtown and were unfamiliar with some well-known clubs.
Every time I posited the idea that this bill, in the wrong hands, could expand government beyond reasonable boundaries, I was met with rebuttals that sidestepped the concern, with divergences about safety and the growth of arts and entertainment.

Yet City Hall has its share of critics, such as Joe Edwardsen, owner of Joe Squared Pizza on North Avenue, who sees the bill as “an unnecessary addition to the already overly deterring bureaucracy keeping much-needed businesses from opening in this city.”
If the City Council wants to better our way of life, have at it. But upon being handed a pamphlet promoting the bill, I found the language unabashedly authoritarian. Under the heading “Right vs. Privilege:” “Entertainment licenses will be a privilege that can be revoked, suspended, not renewed or granted in the first place as well as give communities a say during the process.” Nice of them to stick us in at the end there.

We must ask the question: Is this is a remedy to a broken system or an attempt at policing venues at an unacceptable level?
Dive into the fine print, and you find things that make ya go “Hmmm.” Like how, during the application period, 10 complaints would land your venue in hot water with the board. For the record, I think a Chili’s could get eight without even trying.

It describes the nine-month waiting period to reapply if you don’t meet the board’s approval. (Also called, “Going out of business if live entertainment pays your bills.”)

And under “Qualifications,” the board attempts to read your moral character by considering “all criminal convictions of the applicant.”

Remember the “z” word, zoning, and how this bill is supposed to spare us of that old ailment? To my surprise, it says, “A live entertainment license may not become effective unless all zoning authorizations required for the use have been obtained.”

“Yes, [it] means [the venue] must have underlying zoning as a restaurant, tavern or dance hall,” O’Doherty writes in an e-mail. “Again, the bill removes live entertainment from the zoning code and replaces it with a licensure process.”

So what exactly does this bill do for Baltimore?

E-mail andrew.smullian@baltimorecity.gov to attend the briefing at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at City Hall, fourth floor. Contact Ed Schrader at ed@whamcity.com

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