Proposal to Register Home Workers Shelved

Officials in West Hollywood have shelved a controversial proposal that would have required people who earn a living working at home to register with the city.

But several TV and motion picture writers who opposed the proposed law, claiming it smacked of “Big Brotherism,” expressed concern this week that officials may attempt to revive the proposal several months from now.

“Right now, I don’t trust anything the city says or does on this issue,” said Robert Adels, a writer who likened the ill-fated provision to “something out of Nazi Germany.”

City officials said last week at a Business License Commission hearing that they were postponing consideration of the measure. Several writers, including a spokeswoman for the Writers Guild of America, West, spoke against the proposal at the hearing.

About 500 of the guild’s more than 7,500 members--who represent an estimated 90% of all film and broadcast writers in the United States--live in West Hollywood, said guild spokeswoman Cheryl Rhoden. The guild is headquartered in the city.

City Manager Paul Brotzman said the decision had nothing to do with the writers’ opposition.

Brotzman said the move “should not be interpreted as the city backing away from anything.” He said the proposal may be included in another, yet-to-be-developed ordinance officials have begun to discuss that would establish a business-license tax in West Hollywood.

“When we began devising the ordinance with the registration provision in it a year ago, there was no business-license tax on the horizon, and now that that appears to be changing, it appears to make more sense to hold up on the registration,” he said.

Since the defeat three weeks ago of an $8-million bond issue to build a fire station and library, Brotzman and other city officials have expressed enthusiasm for such a tax as a means to help finance some of the city’s more pressing needs, particularly public parking facilities.

First Regulation

What raised the writers’ ire was a plan to license many of the city’s estimated 3,000 to 5,000 businesses, many of which have remained unregulated since West Hollywood became a city five years ago.

Brotzman said the commission will continue to hold hearings on other aspects of the ordinance, which must be approved by the City Council to become law.

While exempting from regulation writers, artists and others who are self-employed and work at home, the law would have required such people to register with the city clerk’s office and pay an annual fee to be determined by the City Council.

City officials were careful to distinguish between regulation and registration, saying it was never their intention to regulate writers and others who earn their living at home.

They said the ordinance is similar to laws in Los Angeles and other cities, and said they were surprised the West Hollywood proposal should have been considered controversial.

Opposed to Public Record

But Adels and others--who opposed the idea when the commission first began considering it a month ago--said the law was drafted in a way that would make them vulnerable to city officials and anyone else wanting to pry into their business activities.

They were especially upset with a provision that would have required applicants to make their name, address and phone number a matter of public record and would require them to provide the city with “any other information that the Director of Community Development deems necessary.”

Despite the decision to place the registration provision on the back burner, the writers are not pleased.

“I don’t find it comforting at all,” said Kay Lenard, a TV and motion picture writer. “The way it looks to me, they’re considering actually taxing us, which may turn out to be more offensive than the original proposal.”

Brotzman said it was “premature to even speculate about what form” any business-license tax package might take, and how the writers and others in a similar category might be affected.

“I would think that in any case we will be looking at how persons who are required to register are treated in other cities,” he said.

Collect Statistics

Brotzman and Paul Self, the city’s business license officer, said the proposed registration requirement was designed to collect statistical information that could be used to help West Hollywood collect its fair share of state sales tax proceeds.

Rhoden said the guild plans to continue to review the situation carefully in the next few months and to try to persuade city officials not to attempt to categorize guild members who write at home as people operating businesses in their homes.

“The members of our guild come under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Act, by which they are recognized as employees of the companies for whom they work,” she said. “The act precludes a local municipality from redefining the status of these writers as businesses.”