Panhandlers face fines in Wasilla

WASILLA — Police are authorized beginning Monday to ticket to panhandlers in city limits.

“I’ve given money. You never know when you’re going to meet an angel. But then all of a sudden it’s the same person over and over again? It becomes problematic,” Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright said as the city council discussed the ordinance. “It’s not something that’s enforced unless police observe the consistent behavior that they’re touching people or blocking the sidewalk.”

City attorney Richard Payne said it’s hard to write an anti-panhandling ordinance that’s enforceable.

“These type of things are constantly litigated because nobody wants to make poverty illegal and no one wants to make the first amendment a moot point,” Payne said.

Rupright said that a consistent panhandler in the McDonald’s parking lot was ticketed numerous times, but each time the ticket got thrown out of court on free speech grounds.

“One of the problems we had with (District Court) Judge (David) Zwink was the first amendment,” Rupright said.

Council member Leone Harris spoke up in favor of the ordinance.

“I would say 90 percent are doing this for drug money,” she said. “Maybe this is one way to hush that down a little bit.”

City resident Anne Kilkenny said that she herself once panhandled. She said she was $10 short of her college tuition and went out asking for money.

“Are we going to make it illegal to be poor in Wasilla,” she said. “That’s what we’re saying when we’re saying you can’t beg, you can’t panhandle. It’s illegal to be poor here.”

The only other city resident to testify on the ordinance, Garvin Bucaria, described getting asked for money by the same individual.

“I would just like to be able to see something in the city code that specifies panhandling is illegal in the city of Wasilla,” he said.

Payne said that the law would be hard to enforce but, then, enforcing city law often can be tricky. He noted that the offense isn’t an arrest-able one.

“For a lot of these people, this is going to be essentially meaningless,” he said.

But the ticket does come with a penalty. The first ticket is a warning, the second a $100 fine or eight hours of community service, and the third a $200 fine or 16 hours of community service.

Payne said that community service requirements can be discharged with something as simple as a note from a senior citizen testifying that the defendant raked her yard.

And while a lot of people ticketed probably won’t be able to pay a fine, a surprising number would be able to through garnishments.

“In Alaska, we also have something magical, and it’s called the Permanent Fund Dividend check,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.