Original Article Hooters case shows public cleaves to false idea of openness Jan. 26, 2006 12:00 AM "ATempe community-action group says it plans to vigorously protest a hearing on whether to approve a liquor license for the restaurant Hooters at a City Council meeting tonight. Margaret Ebert, president of the group Ethics in Action, said 30 letters have been sent to the council asking that the liquor license be denied because Hooters treats women like sex objects, discriminates against men and is damaging to families." That's what Arizona Republic reporter Mark Shaffer wrote in an article published Feb. 16, 1995, nearly 11 years ago. Shaffer continued, "The restaurant has come under fire from women's groups because waitresses are required to wear scanty outfits of T-shirts with tight orange shorts, leaving bare midriffs. They also say the term 'Hooters' is nothing more than a pseudonym for women's breasts." In the article, a fellow named Joe Wilson, a regional director of the Hooters chain at the time, opined that, "The restaurant was named in deference to owls." More than 100 people attended the aforementioned hearing. Opponents submitted 300 petition signatures charging that a Hooters bar in downtown Tempe would result in an increase in sex offenses on the nearby campus of Arizona State University and increase drinking problems among young male students. That evening, the City Council voted, 6-1, to deny the bar's liquor license application. The following April, the state Liquor Board rejected the council's timid vote and approved the license. Hooters subsequently opened its doors on the second floor of the Laird-Dines Building on the southeastern corner of Mill Avenue and Fifth Street. Its scantily-clad barmaids have been serving beer and wine there ever since. To no thinking person's surprise, Tiny Town's downtown is no worse for wear and neither are the university's young male students. Furthermore, there has been no increase in the number of sex offenses on the ASU campus attributable to Hooters. The whole public hearing process was a giant waste of time, a demonstration of unrestrained public participation run amok. The facts underlying the opposition were baseless. Opponents of the liquor license made stuff up, as opponents of most things so often do. For its part, the Tempe City Council had no legal basis for voting to deny the Hooters application. Members did it because, as one council member put it, "We voted with our hearts. It was purely emotional." Today, more than a decade later, an inordinate amount of time is still being wasted on all manner of vacuous public hearings. Why call it wasteful? Well, first and foremost, public hearings are wasteful because really big deals are cut and votes are counted before public hearings are conducted. Given that fact, why bother holding them? Continuances are randomly granted to facilitate political posturing. Conditions of approval are mandated to placate those who believe their opinions matter, when they seldom, if ever, do. Ironically, the more "open" local government is said to be, the less "open" the decision-making process has become. Substantive decisions are made in closed executive sessions, not at open public hearings. People who believe otherwise are nave. The inevitable backroom wheeling and dealing isn't what bothers me. Folks are going to do what they're going to do. Besides, how else is anyone supposed to get anything of any consequence done? No, what troubles me is the hypocrisy of those who claim the so-called "public hearing process" is open and fair, when, in fact, it's neither. Face it. Municipal governments are dominated by influence peddlers. And chief among them are a special breed of politician. We habitually see select elected officials bragging about their super-human abilities to influence events. "Look at me and see what I can do for you!" The bureaucracy often aids and abets their self-aggrandizement. Various, though certainly not all, of the elected office holders who stroll among us are the ones who fancy themselves the community's real dealmakers and breakers. And they quietly cut those deals behind closed doors that are as tightly shut as a pair of Hooters shorts. Dan Durrenberger is a 32-year resident of the Southeast Valley who lives in Tempe and works in Mesa. He can be reached at DJDurrenberger@aol.com.