UPDATE: November 14, 2012, Food Trucks filed suit against City of Chicago challenging the passed ordinance’s constitutionality. Details on HuffPost

Original post, 7/19/12:

I testified at City Council’s Licensing Committee hearing on the proposed Food Truck Ordinance.  You can DOWNLOAD MY TESTIMONY.  I did not go to argue any specifics of how food trucks and restaurants should get along.  I went to call attention to the Dept of Business Affairs continued over-zealous, over-regulation.

What fun, I got to sit right next to the people that closed us down as I spoke.  The answers were predictable, “you make very good points, and this suggests we need comprehensive reform.”  That’s code for “we can’t do it now, it’s too big. We’ll do it later.”

I don’t thing it has to be this big job that you have to put off.  You can go to licensing rehab and get started right away.  Stop creating more food license types.  Or call it what it really is: a public employee job retention program.  These laws don’t make the public safer.  They keep 200 BACP workers working that should not be.

When something is not sustainable, it is destroying the resources upon which it depends.  That’s what our City government does with every ordinance like this latest for Food Trucks. Hopefully someone will connect the dots and realize what a short walk it is from my healthy business to a city worker’s paycheck.