Those pesky panhandlers

Hey, buddy, can you spare an ordinance?

What’s your response when you’re approaching an intersection in a car and you spot a guy on the corner holding a tattered piece of cardboard on which a message is scrawled?

“Anything helps,” it might say. “Homeless,” might be another curbside solicitor’s choice.

“God bless,” seems to be a favorite, too.

So, what are the first thoughts that come to mind? Is it sadness at their situation? Is it skepticism? Or do you just get frustrated that these men and women — panhandlers, some call them — are making the community look bad?

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and people who want/need to beg for money on street corners, towns across the United States have seen homeless or down-on-their-luck people take up posts at popular, busy intersections. Before that, these vulnerable populations were less aggressive because all it usually took to shoo them away was a strong chat with a local police officer.

The Supreme Court issued a ruling about signs in 2015. It didn’t have anything to do with panhandling. But ever since, other courts have used the language protecting signs as free speech as a foundation for rejecting municipal ordinances designed to prevent people from begging on street corners. The ACLU has aggressively challenged city ordinances that attempt to quash the practice of begging for money. People who panhandle, they say, are Americans expressing themselves, as the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects.

So communities around the country have had to adjust — to back off, really. And the practice of panhandling has proliferated.

It doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. So, in turn, it doesn’t sit well with a lot of elected city officials.

Which brings us to Rogers, home of the Mounties, the War Eagles and an ongoing effort to get panhandlers off the streets.

The City Council last week unanimously repealed its panhandling ordinance, but not really by choice. Following the national trend, a U.S. district judge had ruled Rogers’ effort to wrangle panhandling fell short of constitutional. Rogers and other cities have attempted to craft limitations on panhandling as a matter of public safety, i.e., barring streetside beggars from interacting in any way with the cars and trucks on city roads. City leaders want to make sure nobody gets hurt and, oh yeah, as an entirely unintentional side effect, that would seriously cut down on panhandlers’ capacity to collect money and maybe discourage them from hanging out on street corners.

It’s the old kill-the-demand-by-killing-the-supply trick.

And those mean ol’ courts killed the ordinance. But remember, this is Rogers, where the motto is “where possible lives.”

“The fact that the courts have indicated that this is a First Amendment right and that it outweighs the safety issue of pedestrians interacting with motor vehicles in operation is unbelievable to me,” said Mayor and former law enforcement officer Greg Hines.

“It’s not an issue I’m willing to put to bed. I think of all the concerns I hear from citizens in our city, this one is probably one that reaches the top most of the time, so I feel it’s important for us to continue to have the conversation.”

Staff attorney Bonnie Bridges told the City Council the administration’s efforts will pick up again in the new year “to see if we can come up with a different solution to address the problem. It’s not something that we’re just going to give up on.”

The problem is panhandling. The good folks at City Hall know enough not to say that, but that’s the reality. Otherwise, why not just enforce laws such as jaywalking? Oh, that would only work if everyone doing it were issued citations. Rogers just wants something that will primarily impact panhandlers.

We’re sure a lot of the considerable legal expertise available to the city will be put to work to resolve this, but given the existence of that pesky court ruling that made this about the First Amendment, the city is going to keep running into the same difficulties when the goal is “Let’s end panhandling.”

It may be the solution involves a slightly different approach, perhaps one that considers panhandlers a part of the community, among the people most in need of social services. Maybe seeing them on the street corner will mean the greater community won’t get to just ignore them any longer. Maybe the community response will have to seek to address the issue of homelessness and poverty.

Nah, let’s just draft another ordinance.