SOUNDING OFF:

The City of Orange is about to enact new city ordinances to protect the public and day workers themselves from unsafe solicitation activities of some day workers.

There is always difficulty in drafting such ordinances. If they are too broad or vague they may violate the 1st Amendment rights of day workers and others. Even if day workers are in the country illegally, they have Constitutional protections.

Therein lies the rub. Cities must act responsibly to protect public safety and public order, but not break the law themselves in doing so. Competing interests must be balanced, and ordinances must be narrowly drafted and be applied evenly and fairly.

On their face, the ordinances being proposed appear reasonable and are for a proper purpose and thus may withstand any possible constitutional challenges. They are similar to what we have in Costa Mesa, but with some possibly significant differences including a catch-22 provision, which I’ll get to presently after a few preliminaries.

The main elements of the proposed Orange ordinances ban solicitation — from sidewalks next to streets without parking lanes.

By contrast, Costa Mesa’s Municipal Code Section 10-354 provides that no one is supposed to solicit work from those in motor vehicles traveling along a street, regardless of whether the street has parking lanes. The loophole in both ordinances is that if a potential employer parks in a legal parking space next to a sidewalk, a day worker can solicit work from them.

The proposed Orange ordinances also prohibits solicitors who are stopped or standing in a traffic lane, median or driveway apron on a public right of way.

Costa Mesa’s CMMC Section 10-354.2 (10) has a better definition than found in Orange’s proposed ordinance in that in Costa Mesa, “Street shall mean all of the area dedicated to public use for public street purposes and shall include, but not be limited to, roadways, parkways, medians, alleys, sidewalks, driveways, curbs, and public ways.”

The proposed Orange ordinances ban solicitors from private property without the owner’s written permission.

In Costa Mesa, under CMMC Section 10-354.1, owners of private property (imagine a convenience or paint store) must post a specific sign on their property prohibiting solicitation and the owner must notify the CMPD about the sign. Thereafter, the CMPD may remove day workers from the site. The problem is that few owners do this.

Now, here comes the catch-22 that may make Orange’s ordinance effective.

Say you own a convenience market or paint store where you want to let day workers congregate on your property. No problem, right? Why, all you have to do is give a written permission slip to the day workers.

Not so fast, Bunky. If you do that, you will apparently be running a job center, which requires a conditional-use permit from the Planning Commission.

If you don’t, you are subject to a fine of up to $250 for the first offense, $500 for the second and $1,000 and possible jail time for the third.

And then there’s all that stuff about aiding and abetting illegal aliens and other federal laws and various workplace rules about having restrooms and safe conditions for those using your job center in your parking lot. And, your insurance company might not like the potential exposure it could face with your new job-center business.

My guess is that not many private property owners will want to give out permission slips for day workers’ parking lot use. If the day workers don’t have them, they can be removed.

M. H. MILLARD is a Costa Mesa writer.