AGOURA HILLS LAW USED AS MODEL TO CRACK DOWN ON BEGGARS.

Byline: Tom Schmitz San Jose Mercury News

Jumping headlong into one of the thorniest areas of local lawmaking, Santa Clara officials are preparing an ordinance that would prevent beggars from soliciting money or work along public roadways.

The regulations are aimed at "signers," panhandlers who direct their pleas toward motorists, using hand-printed placards. Their ranks have swelled sharply in recent years, drawing complaints from drivers and prompting cities to search for ways to crack down.

Santa Clara police say signers are a threat to public safety because they disrupt traffic. But such arguments are likely to be opposed by civil libertarians, who have vigorously fought attempts to regulate panhandling as unconstitutional.

If Santa Clara does manage to ban signers, it will be the first Bay Area city to do so. Berkeley's attempt to impose tough panhandling laws was struck down in court. And Corte Madera opted to suspend enforcement of its signing ordinance until Berkeley's battle is resolved.

Anti-panhandling statutes "are unreasonably restrictive of what we consider free speech," said Alan Schlosser, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's the kind of regulation where there is a real burden on the government to justify it."

Santa Clara is hoping to meet that test by modeling its ordinance on legislation passed by Agoura Hills. Enacted in 1991 to control day laborers, the law prohibits the solicitation of work, business or contributions from people traveling in motor vehicles.

As public policy, the ordinance turned out to have serious flaws. Day laborers still congregate in Agoura Hills, and the city has found the statute difficult to enforce. But as law, it proved far more resilient, withstanding a crucial free-speech challenge in a federal appeals court.

Santa Clara officials hope that by applying the restrictions to beggars rather than laborers, they will be able to succeed where other cities have failed. Although the number of signers is small compared to other towns, police say they want to respond to the complaints coming from high-traffic areas along the El Camino Real and the San Tomas Expressway.

"We've never really had a tool for dealing with this issue," said police Chief Charles Arolla. "We're very mindful of people's First Amendment rights. We're just trying to eliminate a potential problem."

The proposed ordinance is expected to come before the City Council on March 26. Like the Agoura Hills law, Santa Clara's would prohibit anyone from seeking money or employment from motorists. But it leaves them free to approach people in other public areas, such as sidewalks and automatic teller machines. City officials said such rules only restrict conduct, not speech, putting them on solid constitutional ground.

"It's very narrowly tailored," said Deputy City Attorney Jolie Houston, who drafted the ordinance. "They just have to stay out of the streets and stop interfering with traffic."

Such distinctions raise hackles among civil libertarians. They point out that courts have traditionally allowed limits on First Amendment rights only in the face of a compelling public interest. And they charge the real motive driving anti-panhandling laws is rooted in aesthetics, not safety.

"When you push to what's really behind it, it comes down to the fact that someone is offended, upset or frightened by the sight of poor people looking for work or money," said the ACLU's Schlosser, who is leading the fight against Berkeley's ordinance. "That is not what the courts have considered compelling."

Ironically, the Agoura Hills victory proved hollow. When the city tried to apply the law to day laborers, they found they could not prove the violation unless they could overhear the conversation between the motorist and the worker.

Because roadside panhandlers solicit with signs, such proof is easier to come by. But Santa Clara may find itself facing other pitfalls.

Corte Madera, the only other Bay Area city that employed the Agoura Hills model to pass a law against signers, backed down after the Legal Aid Society of Marin threatened to take them to court.

The group argued the city could not demonstrate a single instance in which a signer had caused a traffic jam or accident, and that all the complaints had come from merchants at one local mall. Likewise, any dangerous conduct could just as easily be blamed on the drivers who stopped to donate money, rather than the beggars who asked them to.

"There were no facts to support it," said legal aid director Lauren Hallinan. "They couldn't point to anything hazardous."

Santa Clara police acknowledge that they too have had only a handful of complaints and cannot connect signers with any accidents. But officials say that's not the point.

"A court doesn't look at some magic number," Houston said. "If you meet the threshold of a clear state interest, then the number of incidents shouldn't matter."