Do Beggars Need Licenses? ‘Somebody’ Says They Do : Law: An Anaheim councilman and an anti-crime group are pushing for such an ordinance. The issue may stir debate over free-speech rights.

ANAHEIM —  A City Council member and an anti-crime group are pushing for an ordinance that would require panhandlers to obtain a city business license, an issue that may stir arguments over the legal right to beg.

Councilman Frank Feldhaus and leaders of the group “Somebody” say the city’s 100 regular panhandlers operate daily, often in the same spot, making their activity a small business that should be licensed.

Such an ordinance, if adopted, might be the first of its kind in the nation.

Federal courts have ruled that begging is protected as free speech by the First Amendment and cannot be outlawed, although cities can prosecute panhandlers or anyone else who blocks sidewalks or attempts to intimidate passersby.

Experts said they know of no city that requires beggars to obtain a business license.

“If the beggars are making money from their endeavors, they should have to buy a business license just like anyone else,” Feldhaus said. He says he knows of some panhandlers who collect $100 or more a day.

“We would require the panhandler to wear his license on his shirt, so that everybody can see it,” said Harald Martin, an Anaheim police officer and a Somebody leader.

“That way, if a panhandler gets too aggressive, he can be reported to the city and his license can be pulled,” Martin said.

Somebody--a 150-member group that takes its name from the lament “The police can’t solve all of our problems, but somebody’s got to do something”--gained some national notoriety earlier this year when it dumped 1,750 pounds of steer manure in a park to stink out drug dealers who gathered there.

City officials estimate that a beggar’s business license would cost about $100 annually. The officials say state law requires all license holders to have permanent addresses, something most panhandlers do not have. “We make cab drivers, bartenders and bar girls get licensed, so why not panhandlers?” Martin said.

Maggie Gonzalez, a retired nurse who first proposed the ordinance to Somebody, said she is continually harassed by panhandlers when she shops near her home downtown. At first, she said, she tried to give the beggars coupons that could be redeemed for a meal at a rescue mission but “they would throw it on the ground, spit on it and say ‘thanks for nothing.’ They just want money for drugs and booze.”

The group plans to come to the council this month with petitions containing 5,000 signatures and to demand that the ordinance be drawn up and adopted. Feldhaus informally suggested the ordinance during a recent council meeting. No ordinance has been written yet.

Robin Toma, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles, which argued for the panhandlers in many of the federal court cases that guaranteed beggars free-speech rights, said he thinks courts would reject the proposed ordinance if it was adopted and then challenged.

“It would seem that the goal of the ordinance would be to circumvent the prior court decisions and achieve a ban (on begging) without calling it that,” Toma said. “Aside from the constitutional aspects, it also seems that it would be bad policy because the city would be taxing the people who can least afford it.”

Phil Gutis, a spokesman for the ACLU at its national headquarters in New York, said licenses were once required of panhandlers--in 16th Century England.

“In the Elizabethan era, all paupers were required to get a license to beg,” he said. “I guess we’re going back in time.”

A constitutional law expert said such an ordinance could have a tough time surviving a court challenge.

Gloria M. Sanchez, a professor at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, said the city would first have to prove that begging is a business and, as Toma said, show that the ordinance is not an attempt to undo the court decisions guaranteeing panhandlers free-speech rights.

“A business is usually defined as the exchange of goods and services --someone pays money to someone who then performs a service,” Sanchez said. “People are providing money to the panhandlers, but are they getting a service in return? So there would be questions about whether these people are being included in a regulated class--business owners--where they don’t belong.”

Feldhaus said he does not understand how requiring a business license could violate a panhandler’s free-speech rights.

“I don’t agree with anybody who says this would violate the First Amendment,” Feldhaus said. “This is a business we’re talking about. The courts have interpreted the First Amendment in ways not imagined by our Founding Fathers.”

On the street, panhandlers said they don’t want to beg but that they have no choice and that being required to buy a business license would be one more obstacle for them to overcome. Some say begging is an alternative to being a criminal, something they say they do not want to be.

“I think the city councilman would rather have me doing this than committing crimes because I don’t bother anybody,” said Jeff Levine, 23.

Levine stands on a corner of Katella Avenue and Harbor Boulevard just outside Disneyland, offering to tell jokes to passersby for 25 cents a joke. Levine said he lives in a motel and that he began his curbside comedy routine two weeks ago after being fired as a cashier at a nearby restaurant.

“I look for work every day, then I come here for two or three hours,” Levine said. “I make about $8 or $10. I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink. I don’t commit crimes. There are too many people out of work, and they are going to be out here because there are no more jobs out there.”

Russell Clark, 49, who has a long beard and greasy hair and clothes, panhandles at the corner of Katella Avenue and Euclid Street, waving down drivers as they pass.

Clark says he is a Vietnam veteran who can’t work because he is a “5150”--police jargon for someone who is mentally ill. One of the few possessions with Clark this day is an almost empty 40-ounce bottle of Cobra malt liquor hidden nearby in a paper sack.

“I don’t want to beg, but I have a right to be here,” Clark said, doffing his baseball cap and flashing the peace sign to drivers as they pass. “I went through hell in Vietnam. . . . If they make us get a license, I’ll get one. I’ll do whatever it takes. But then what are they going to do to me?”

He mutters a barnyard obscenity when told that some people say panhandlers make $100 and more a day.

“I make $10, maybe,” he said. “The best day I ever had was Christmas when I got $50.”

Those who work with homeless people, although pointing out that they don’t condone panhandling, said the ordinance would do nothing to solve the problems that lead people to beg. Such problems include a shortage of jobs, of low-cost housing and of government programs for drug addicts, alcoholics and the mentally and physically disabled.

“I understand where these people (Feldhaus and Somebody) are coming from, but I think they are attacking the symptoms of the problem and not the root causes,” said Susan Oakson, executive director of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force. “Their efforts would be better focused on the causes of homelessness and poverty.”

Mary Doman, program manager of Anaheim’s Episcopal Service Alliance, said that if passed, the plan could backfire “by making panhandling a legitimate profession. If the city has enough money to enforce this kind of ordinance, then it has enough money to help these people and get them off the street.”

A similar business license proposal was made four years ago in Long Beach, by then-City Councilman Wallace Edgerton, who said he was attempting to call attention to panhandlers “who awere standing in front of stores, scaring away the clientele.”

Edgerton said his proposed ordinance was never formally presented to the Long Beach council but that it prompted the Long Beach city attorney to prosecute aggressive panhandlers using existing laws.

“These panhandlers may be homeless, and we should try to help them,” Edgerton said, “but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have to follow the laws like everyone else.”