Street Vending Plan Gets Preliminary OK

The Los Angeles City Council gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a plan for limited legalization of street vending--offering entrance into the economic mainstream for hundreds of pushcart merchants, but angering shop owners who say they will be hurt by the competition.

By a 10-4 vote, the City Council approved a two-year pilot program that will license and regulate vendors in eight commercial districts that will be chosen later.

Vending will remain a misdemeanor in most of the city--punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The City Council, voting five years after lawmakers first took up the issue, agreed to the limited legalization of sidewalk sales in hopes that they can regulate a practice that has created increasing animosity between vendors, homeowners and merchants.

An amendment to the law requires that a plan for cracking down on illegal vending be in place by the time the first legal vending districts are formally approved.

The council must approve the proposal again, probably on Friday, after it has been drafted into an ordinance by the city attorney’s office.

“We know if we do nothing that vending will continue and will increase, leading to heightened animosity and heightened tension at a time our city needs that the least,” said Councilman Richard Alarcon, who sponsored the vending proposal. “This is a way to deal with the totality of the issue.”

Councilman Richard Alatorre praised the proposal, saying it would bring the vendors--mostly Latinos and many of them new immigrants--into the economic mainstream. “That entrepreneurial spirit should not be crushed,” Alatorre said. “It should be advanced in a legitimate way.”

Opponents argued, however, that vending will hurt businesses that have supported the city with their taxes for years. “This is not about equal rights or civil rights,” said businessman Gilbert Baker. “It’s about business rights.”

Baker, president of a group of black merchants, said plans are being laid for a petition drive to put a measure on the ballot that would invalidate the vending ordinance. The president of the Korean American Grocers Assn. pledged to join in that effort.

But supporters of the law, including several other business alliances, said it provides plenty of protections for merchants.

Vendors will have to get permission from 20% of the business people on a block to initiate a vending district. Community advisory committees will then be formed to draw operating plans, including hours of operation and products to be sold. Vendors will have to buy standardized carts and operate in a single, fixed location, away from any businesses that disapprove of them.

Street vending activists said in a letter to council members that they tentatively have eight neighborhoods in mind for street vending: the Pico-Union and Westlake districts west of Downtown; Hollywood; East Los Angeles; South-Central Los Angeles, near the intersection of Vernon and Central avenues; Leimert Park in Southwest Los Angeles; Watts, and the northeast San Fernando Valley.