Licensing psychics

Gazing deep into our crystal ball, we predict Clark County is either going to issue Debbie Marks a license to open her fortune-telling concession in a strip mall on East Desert Inn Road, hurry-up quick, or else lose a very expensive slam-dunk lawsuit on the constitutionality of its current business licensing procedures.

Ms. Marks is of Romani descent -- a Gypsy. That wouldn't be relevant, except that she believes it has played a role in her nine-month, multithousand-dollar struggle to acquire a Clark County business license for her Goddess Salon and Psychic Readings enterprise.

Forty-three people already hold licenses to operate businesses as astrologers, spiritualists or psychics in Clark County. If those licenses weren't issued until Las Vegas police satisfied themselves that the applicants could really deliver the goods, we'd love to see those reproducible test results. Heck, the tabloid TV shows might even be distracted for a few days from hanging around, waiting for the next partying starlet to slip out of her spaghetti straps.

It's because psychics are in a position to "potentially exploit citizens" that police are authorized to demand that applicants for such licenses submit their fingerprints and agree to undergo a background check which includes their financial history -- the same as those seeking licenses to operate nursing homes and child care centers, county officials explain.

And Las Vegas police Detective Stacy Rodd told county commissioners last week that police found Ms. Marks uncooperative with their request for an interview.

Ms. Marks replies she forwarded the interview request to her attorney, and that she tried to contact Detective Toni Weeks, the officer assigned to investigate her, to arrange the required fingerprinting. "I am glad police do these checks," she says. "But there was no reason to not give me a license, no criminal background, no fraud."

Police contend Ms. Marks has used a different surname -- Evans -- in the past. That's her husband's name.

Ms. Marks has retained Los Angeles civil rights attorney Barry Fisher, who contends, "There were some persons from the Police Department on a fishing expedition against my client. Police just kept coming up with more and more abject curiosity-driven or prejudice-driven questions. ... We could've taken a hard line, but instead we painstakingly dealt with everything they threw at us. ... Our position is that these issues they were raising were irrelevant and unconstitutional."

Indeed, court decisions have held that fortune-telling is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. In a separate case, Deputy Las Vegas City Attorney Larry Bettis wrote in a March 2006 letter to Mr. Fisher's firm that the city would amend its licensing code for fortune tellers "in recognition of their free speech rights protected under the Constitution of the State of Nevada and the First Amendment."

Mr. Fisher reports attorneys in the Clark County DA's office have acknowledged a similar problem with the county code. Which is probably why Ms. Marks' license application was finally advanced to the agenda of last week's commission meeting with a recommendation it be approved.

Instead, it was again postponed after a heated debate, following objections by County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani that commission members had not been informed of the Police Department's objections.

This is police bureaucracy run amok. The best solution would be to disband these "business licensing" schemes entirely. Surely Southern Nevadans have a God-given right to start up a small business in an attempt to earn a living -- assuming all the concomitant risks -- without government "permission."

But if a licensing fee is required to cover the actual costs of the city or county in whatever minimal oversight is actually afforded, that fee should be uniform and easy to pay, and the absurd pretense that police can somehow guarantee us that fortune-tellers are "legitimate" and "not likely to rip off their patrons" should be immediately abandoned as a fraudulent implied warranty that county bureaucrats have neither the authority nor the expertise to issue.

Can we rest assured an attorney will offer us stellar legal representation -- that a doctor's surgery will be successful, that a garage won't replace unnecessary parts -- just because they have a city or county "business license" hanging on the wall?

Of course not. So why spend taxpayer dollars pretending that anyone can offer such a guarantee?