“Be careful what you wish for, because you actually might get it.”

Parents love to say this kind of stuff to their kids, ad nauseum. Usually, it’s when their child makes some preposterous remark about the way they think things should be and don’t fully grasp the ramifications or consequences their ideas would cause.

Right now the Maple Valley City Council is considering a business license. As it is written currently all businesses within the city, aside from a few exceptions, would have to pay a $50 fee. Officials state the $50 would be used solely to cover the costs of the program and not provide revenue for the city.

So far, it has received a strong backlash from the business community, and for good reason. A lot of their criticisms are fair. Right now, they already have to get a state license. Why do they need another one? And yes, the $50 fee is small, but how many other fees do businesses already have to pay? This just adds one more unnecessary straw to an already weakened camel’s back.

Additionally, the business license may not be revenue-generating. But when the city’s revenue from residential housing starts to taper out, it could become too tempting for future councils to resist. For example, the city of Bothell has a business license fee of $5,098 for a company of 800 employees, $243 for 25 employees and $39 for two employees.

At the moment Bothell’s City Council, according to a recent story in our sister paper the Bothell-Kenmore Reporter, is considering a large increase to help cover revenue loss.

This is what Maple Valley business owners are afraid will happen eventually.

The problem is, the city also has legitimate issues that officials feel need to be addressed.

Council member Sean Kelly pointed out that the business license would allow the city to determine areas where public safety might be a concern and know what kind of businesses are in the city. It would also allow the city to contact business owners whose properties have been damaged or robbed.

Some people, particularly in the medical marijuana advocacy camp, might see this as a furtive way for the city to prevent businesses like Green Society Group from coming in by denying them a business license.

Even though the city may institute a collective garden ban, GSG has stated repeatedly that it is a management company and not a collective garden, so it could still be denied through a business license.

While that is true, it’s not what precipitated it. Exactly a year ago, the City Council was discussing the idea of a business license program at its June 26 meeting. The timing for the proposal may seem very coincidental with the opening of GSG, but it’s merely one more reason among several others.

If the city’s main reason for the business license program was just due to public safety, I could see several alternatives. For example, the city could instead pass an ordinance that would require a business to provide them with some basic contact information. This could easily be done for free via the city’s website. They would be required to state what type of business they are.

As for the GSG/collective garden issue, that is for another time, another column (tune in to next’s week episode).

Nevertheless, in spite of all the reasonable qualms business owners have with the proposed license, no one seems to want to deal with the elephant in the room that is the root cause of it all.

As Mayor Bill Allison stated in an interview for an article I wrote last week, the city has to create a business license program because the municipal code, as it is written right now, could be challenged in court.

It requires transient salesmen and peddlers to get special licenses, but not other businesses. City Attorney Christy Todd said this ordinance might be difficult to defend if it were challenged. A court may rule it to be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment.

This entire ordeal started last year when attorneys representing transient salesmen contacted the city about its ban on peddlers. Todd told the council the ban was not enforceable, so it was removed.

And just to clarify, this does not mean peddlers have the “right” to trespass on private property. It means the property owner, not the city, decides whether they will conduct a business transaction with someone on their property.

To address issues of “public safety,” the council passed a peddlers license program based on feedback from the community, knowing that the city would probably have to institute an outright business license at some point.

Until this issue gets resolved, every other complaint against the business license, however justified, isn’t going to deter the council.

Yet no one has addressed this. To my knowledge, no one has told the council to get rid of the peddlers license so they aren’t required to institute a license for all businesses.

Which goes back to the “be careful what you wish for” adage.

People wanted the city to regulate peddlers, so the City Council did.  What no one seemed to realize at the time was how it would affect every business in the city.  Now Maple Valley has to regulate them all.

The city can’t pick and choose which businesses to regulate and which ones not to, nor should it. That’s not how capitalism or a free market works.

If business owners in Maple Valley want to prevent a business license, they need to push for the repeal of the peddlers license.

President Reagan once said that the nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Nine words that should be equally as terrifying are “The government ought to pass a law against that!”