CITY MANAGER WILLIAM B. HARRISS and his St. Augustine City Commissioners helped create the homeless problem in St. Augustine

CITY MANAGER WILLIAM B. HARRISS and his St. Augustine City Commissioners helped create the homeless problem in St. Augustine

You've really got to hand it to City MANAGER WILLIAM B. HARRISS and his City Commissioners in St. Augustine, Florida.
St. Augustine City.

Successive groups of Commissioners (other than Susan Burk) repeatedly voted to evict musicians and buskers from St. George Street, using police powers to arrest talented people whom tourists flocked to hear.

They changed the "ecology" of the street, as musician Roger Jolley puts it best.

As Tacitus said, "they created a desert and they called it peace."

Now HARRIS & Co. have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Rousting buskers has created a homeless problem on St. George Street, with beggars taking the place of musicians.

If you owned a store, would you rather have a violinist in front or a beggar?

Could there be a better illustration of the depths of selfishness and small-mindedness that unites the petty burghers who run the bloated $50 million City of St. Augustine city government?

Could there be a better problem of the "law of unintended consequences" than the beggar problem here?

Influential commercial landlords, who allegedly overcharge small businesses, were truculent, arrogant, and eager to arrest buskers, angry that they weren't receiving rent from the buskers.

Now those commercial landlords have made St. George Street dangerous, reaping the whirlwind, with beggars instead of buskers.

First Amendment law appears more protective of begging than it does musicianship.