In summer 2007, when the City Council first proposed licensing for independent event promoters, it didn’t expect much public response, and with good reason—word got out only a few days in advance that the council would be meeting to vote on it. But bad news travels fast online, and dozens of angry promoters and local music advocates showed up to testify, unaware that the city had already bowed to pressure from big players like the United Center and withdrawn the ordinance for a rewrite. This spring, when the proposal reared its ugly head again, it provoked a massive, multidemographic opposition movement that included celebrities like Pete Wentz and Kanye West, and the council backed off a second time.
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There are a few possible reasons for this. The current iteration of the law, unlike the previous two, doesn’t have a deadline attached—it’s still in committee, with no full-council vote scheduled, so it’s tough for the opposition to whip up the same sort of do-or-die urgency. And with this version coming just four months after the previous fight, outrage fatigue is probably a factor—to say nothing of the public’s current focus on national politics. And on top of that, there’s not as much to be outraged about now—after round one, the city carved out huge exemptions to satisfy the big boys, and after round two, it made sure that things like church picnics and bands flyering for their own shows wouldn’t fall under the ordinance’s umbrella. But though the current version is far less draconian, if anything that should embolden the people fighting it—the city has conceded twice already. Why give up now?
The requirement that independent promoters purchase million-dollar insurance policies had been softened when the ordinance returned last spring, but even the $300,000 policies currently required would be prohibitive. In a September 25 interview with local podcaster Jim Goodrich, Chicago Music Commission interim executive director Paul Natkin says that if the ordinance goes into effect, it’ll be the insurance costs that “break all the young promoters in town.” The latest version allows venues to add promoters to their own preexisting policies, but Natkin’s impression, based on a survey the CMC ran on its Web site, is that only about half Chicago’s venues would do that.
To abandon this ordinance, aldermen would have to say no to a new income stream—and given the budget shortfall facing Chicago, even a meager source of revenue like a promoter-licensing fee must look pretty good. They’d also have to say no to the mayor—the consensus among city-politics junkies, among them the Reader‘s own Ben Joravsky, is that this law keeps coming back because Daley wants it passed. Given how frequently aldermen do either of those things, we can safely assume that only sustained citizen action has any chance of killing it.
