D.C. Wants to Lock Up Street Vendors for Code Violations

With the
fourth-highest incarceration rate in the
nation, Washington, D.C., seems like a place that needs more
reasons to lock people up, right? Well, District Council members
here seem to think so, anyway. This morning,
councilmembers proposed criminal penalties for street
vendors—including food trucks, farmer’s markets, and ticket
resellers—who don’t comply with the city’s labyrinth of licensing
requirements, the R Street Institute reports.

Under the “Vending
Regulations Amendment Act of 2014,” considered this morning by
the Council’s Business, Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Committee,
penalties for code violations could include fines of up to $300
and up to 90 days jail time for each violation. The
Metropolitan Police Department would be tasked with enforcing these
charges against those “illegally vending.”

Illegally vending, of course, could simply mean failing to
acquire all of the separate permits and certifications that
different D.C. departments demand, or overlooking any of the
vending code’s
80-plus pages of rules. Washington City Paper

details just a few of the regulations that local
farmer’s markets, for instance, face: 

In the past, most market organizers dealt primarily with the
Department of Transportation, which gives out public space permits.
If vendors planned to cook food, the market would also need a
propane permit from the Office of the Fire Marshall. If they were
weighing vegetables on scales, they’d get a visit from DCRA’s
Office of Weights and Measures.

That was before new, stricter code updates were
enacted, mind you. 

Now all farmers’ markets are required to get a new vending
business license from DCRA, which costs $433 every two years. …
The new rules also require every market to have a registered market
manager on site at all times. That person must obtain a vendor
employee badge from DCRA ($55) and a food handler’s license from
DOH.

The food handling license requires about 20 hours of time and an
additional $200. But forego any of these things? Face the cops.

“Without criminal penalties, the District cannot take immediate,
spot-of-the-violation action to remove an individual who is
illegally vending,” D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray wrote in an April
1 letter
to the chair of the District Council. Gray added that criminalizing
vending code violations would make it easier to penalize
out-of-state vendors, who can’t be deterred with loss of a D.C.
driver’s license or other city services.

Heaven forbid somebody comes selling peppers from Virginia
without the proper Office of Weights and Measures paperwork!
Produce is obviously only safe when you buy it from people who’ve
properly paid off government bureaucrats not to arrest them for
selling it.