Comment on Strip club fee likely to land in court

Strip club fee likely to land in court Houston Chronicle Copyright 2012 Houston Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Published 08:02 p.m., Wednesday, June 27, 2012 Seeking a solution to the bedeviling problem of untested rape evidence that is in some cases decades old, council imposed a $5-per-customer fee on strip clubs Wednesday so it can buy speedier lab work. [...] Cohen sold the ordinance to her colleagues as she declared, "We have waited long enough." "[...] a worthy cause: catching up on the inexcusable backlog of untested rape kits," Brown wrote. The University of Texas study on which she bases that assertion states: Are sexually-oriented-businesses, alcohol, and the victimization and perpetration of sexual violence against women connected? "There's no legitimate government policy reason for taking one small segment of a very, very large industry - the industry that sells alcohol - and making that industry, that tiny segment, responsible for something which is entirely a citywide issue," he said. If government today can target a particular taxpayer to pay something that is truly a municipal obligation, the obligation of the commonweal, then that sets a terrible precedent, because if it's our clients today, it's somebody else's clients tomorrow and a third group the day after that.