In an editorial written in the St. Pete Times over the weekend, the paper questions whether the additional financial hit would discourage anybody from prowling the streets.
The legal costs alone for defending oneself against a prostitution charge could reach thousands of dollars. If that's not enough to dampen the trade, what difference will another $500 make?
This plan creates an illusion the city is being proactive. There is no benefit to the neighborhood from the city charging another $500 when the whole point is to stop the solicitations in the first place. The residents are still losers. The men's families would be, too.
In La Gaceta, editor Patrick Maneiga wrote, "We find it unjust for the city to make the police prosecutor, judge and jury regarding these crimes. The $500 fine is punishment before anyone is proven guilty. ....a clear violation of our rights."
Councilmember Mulhern agrees, saying the city could make it much more difficult for the family of the accused john, e-mailing CL that "families who don't have $650 to get their car back would have difficulty getting to work, getting children to school and there are many families in our region who are reduced to sleeping in their cars."
But the majority of Mulhern's colleagues don't agree, or at least didn't the first time the issue came before them at the Council on December 1.
Councilmember Harry Cohen voted to support the ordinance the first time around, and says he'll do so again on Thursday. He says he thinks it's fair that the owner or co-owner of a car whose partner or spouse was caught doing naughty things gets one chance to get the car back without paying a fine, but only one chance. And he says it's not that radical, since the policy had already been in place until a previous City Council repealed it after similar ordinances in Florida faced legal challenges.
City Attorney Kirby Rainsberger told Council members that the city has rewritten the ordinance and thinks it will withstand constitutional scrutiny.
However, Rainsberger hasn't always been the best prognosticator on such cases.
In 1999, the City Council, led at the time by Bob Buckhorn, passed an ordinance that made it illegal for johns to ask undercover officers to flash them or to touch them as proof they were not police officers. Buckhorn was quoted as saying that Tampa had declared an "all-out war" against prostitution.
Rainsberger told the Council at the time the ordinance was discussed that it would stand up to legal challenges.
In fact, three Hillsborough County judges struck down the ordinance as an unconstitutional violation of free speech.