By: Mark Fitzgerald A key Chicago City Council committee has passed unanimously a new version of a law that, according to its original sponsor, inadvertently banned the distribution of free papers in open stacks.
The council's License Committee unanimously passed a new version of the litter and door-to-door distribution law that no longer includes language apply it to newspapers.
"It now goes to the full City Council for a vote, likely in early December," Ron Roenigk reported to a group of publishers who were lobbying to strike down the ban. "I expect it will pass 50-0 just as the original law did in February."
Roenigk is the publisher of two free community papers on the city's Northwest Side -- Inside, and Inside Lincoln Park -- who this September discovered that the law intended to regulate the practice of, for example, slipping dozens of Chinese restaurant menus into the vestibules of apartment buildings also applied to
newspaper stacked for free distribution in stores.
The original language of the law declared, "It shall be unlawful for any person to distribute or to cause others to distribute...newspapers, periodicals and directories of any kind on any public way or other public place or on the premises of any private property in the city in such a manner that is reasonably foreseeable that such distribution will cause litter."
The penalties included not only fines of as much as $1,000 for each violation -- after three violations, it said the city could take away the offender's business license.
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