The Top 30 Dumbest City Ordinances in Providence

The Top 30 Dumbest City Ordinances in Providence

 If you’ve ever spit in public, walked on the grass at a city park, or swept dirt out onto the sidewalk, you have unwittingly violated one of the many obscure and obsolete ordinances that are still on the books in the City of Providence.

Many—like numerous rules against swearing in public or wearing improper swim attire—date back to a bygone era. Some seem silly: dropping slippery fruit peels on streets or selling model airplane glue to anyone under 21 are against city law. Others are more serious. One ordinance bars employees from taking any sick time for pregnancy-related illnesses. Another allows firefighters to compel citizen assistance in putting out fires. (See the below slides for the full list.)

Potential for abuse

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“Many of the ordinances you’ve found are just silly, but others are quite problematic. The city ordinances barring people from sitting on the grass in parks or lying on park seats are ripe for selective enforcement, and could easily be targeted solely against particular people the police deem ‘undesirable’ for any reason,” said Steven Brown, the executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU.

“And the ordinance barring the use of paid sick leave because of pregnancy or ‘immoral conduct’ is not only blatantly illegal and hopelessly out of date, but its sexist underpinnings simply don’t deserve to appear in a city’s list of current operating laws,” Brown added.

 Several ordinances outlaw swearing in some situations. Bus drivers can refuse service to anyone who uses profane language—even if they are not drunk or otherwise boisterous. Devices used to amplify sound are also not permitted to broadcast expletives. In some circumstances, foul language could even cost some types of street vendors their licenses. “Vague bans on ‘profane, lewd or indecent’ speech have been struck down by the courts for decades and also create tremendous potential for abuse,” Brown said.

As absurd as some ordinances may seem, they carry penalties that could—in the hands of overzealous law enforcement authorities or prosecutors—become serious.

Many of the more archaic ordinances—such as those on proper speech or swim attire—do not have any penalties listed with them. But that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any. In cases in which “no specific penalty is provided” the code of ordinances allows the city to impose a fine of between $1 and $500 or imprisonment of one to thirty days.

“It’s impossible for residents even to know all of the laws of their own towns or cities, let alone those imposed at the state and federal levels. The one thing we can all be reasonably certain of is that, at any given moment, we’re all violating some law or other. That leaves us always vulnerable to selective enforcement by a government that has unprecedented ability to track us and record information about us,” said Justin Katz, the research director at the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

At the state level, the Freedom Center has advocated passage of a “criminal intent” statute to protest citizens from prosecution under outdated laws.

“[T]he center has suggested a variety of offices or panels that would clear antiquated or obstructive laws from the books, and that should apply at local levels, too. It’s not just a matter of keeping the books clean and reducing the effort necessary to maintain the laws.  We also have to change our outlook on what laws are appropriate given the changing reality,” Katz said.

 “Regulating such things as spitting might have solved a real problem, once upon a time, but communities tended to be much more engaged back then, so it was probably more of a community decision, and there was also a reasonable expectation of discretion in enforcement—not the least in the ability of the government to watch and control the public,” Katz added.

Some laws go back to World War I era

In a statement, Council President Michael Solomon acknowledged the city books have a number of outdated ordinances. Whenever it adopts new ordinances or changes existing ones, Solomon said the council “takes the opportunity to update, correct, and modernize those sections.” (He pointed to the article on minimum housing standards as an example.)

“While removing antiquated and obsolete ordinances is important, it is a time-consuming task that we simply could not focus on during the last several years as we worked to avert bankruptcy. I would expect city departments and staff to use discretion in applying the letter of the law when it comes to ordinances that are clearly no longer relevant,” added Solomon, who is also a candidate for mayor.

But Brown says the issue involves more than just removing outdated ordinances. “Every municipality, as well as the state, should make it a practice to examine their laws at least every ten years to remove deadwood from the statute books. There are too many laws out there that are not just archaic and out of date, but also clearly unconstitutional. The danger always exists that laws like those can occasionally be traps for the unwary, or wrongly used by government officials to harass individuals,” Brown said.

Several of the ordinances reviewed by GoLocalProv date back to the 1950s or even the pre-war era—pre-World War I, that is. The grass-walking ban was first introduced in 1914, as were rules against revealing swimwear, throwing water on sidewalks, or leaving fruit peels on streets. The last time some were modified was in the mid-1940s, even as others were added. One ordinance against sweeping dirt onto sidewalks and gutters was introduced to the code in 1944.

 “Reviewing outdated laws, it’s easy to understand how times have changed. The proliferation of vacuum cleaners since 1944 probably eliminates the need for bans on sweeping out storefronts onto the sidewalk. Expansion of indoor plumbing, since 1914, makes the rare circumstances in which one might throw water onto a sidewalk less deserving of prosecution,” Katz said.

It’s unclear when Providence last conducted a comprehensive update of all of its ordinances. Responsibility for maintaining official copies of ordinances falls on the City Clerk’s office. Deputy City Clerk Lori Hagen told GoLocalProv that the office adds new ordinances passed by the Providence City Council about once or twice a year. She also confirmed that the code of ordinances accessible from the City Clerk’s Web page is the most up-to-date version available online, aside from any ordinances passed in 2014 that have not yet been entered into the system. 

Hagen said she could not comment on older ordinances.

City Councilman Luis Aponte remembered just one time in his 16 years on the council when there was discussion about updating the ordinances—and that went nowhere, according to Aponte. “I think that there needs to be an effort to go through the code of ordinances with a mind to streamlining the ordinances and removing ones from a bygone era,” Aponte said.

“This is one of the things that seem to be on to-do lists. They just never get done,” he added. 

Stephen Beale can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @bealenews