Normally, I’m slow to get interested in the variety of bills trying to make it through the Louisiana legislature, and I don’t get riled by ones that would seem to affect New Orleans music culture because most of them die for a host of reasons – some good, most craven. Today I received this one:
SB 136: Threat to the French Quarter and ALL New Orleans Neighborhoods and those throughout Louisiana!
Senate Bill 136 would open the floodgates for any restaurant in possession of a permit to sell liquor to morph into a bar – and to charge a cover and allow live music.
VCPORA supports all of our legitimate bars and live music venues – but we also support our local zoning and other regulations that ensure these uses occur in the appropriate areas.
This bill would effectively compel the state Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control issue licenses to bar-like restaurants, despite the local zoning. And it would create a legal limbo of enforcement that would jeopardize our hard-won protections for neighborhoods and quality of life!
Click here to watch the WVUE Fox 8 news story on this issue
This bill will come before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday at 10 a.m. Please email members of this committee and urge them to vote AGAINST SB 136 – right now!
You can cut and paste the following email addresses into your “to” box, and let these representatives know that you want them to vote against SB 136, for the sake of the Vieux Carre and neighborhoods throughout the state:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
I pass all of this along so that you can do the opposite. Zoning and “quality of life” concerns have been used to limit live music in New Orleans to remarkably few parts of town – Bourbon Street, the neighborhood immediately around the House of Blues, parts of the CBD, and that’s about it. Everything else is grandfathered in or in business by virtue of a specially drawn zoning “overlay” that often requires clubs to make a significant percentage of their revenue from food sales (that’s the case on Frenchmen Street). At a time when we’d like to see more rather than fewer live music venues, the last thing we need is a state law making it harder to open live rooms.
That said, it’s hard to imagine the state getting involved in what is essentially a city or town’s business.
