Big Brother And The Re-Sale / Rummage Sale Near You!!!

[WhiskeyGirl]

"Law will require stores to photograph sellers and list items for police database"

Moms come into New to You Kids in Greenfield every week to sell their babies' outgrown rompers to the small resale shop. But the business says it will have to close if it has to comply with a new city ordinance requiring it to take each mom's picture and send that, along with detailed descriptions of the items she sells, to a police database every day.

The Greenfield ordinance also imposes transaction fees on resale stores that could amount to tens of thousands of dollars annually - a big burden for small retailers.

...

Half-Price Books, a national resale chain that has a store a few doors down from Reinhardt's in the Greenfield Fashion Center, will consider getting out of its lease, district manager Joe Desch said.

Half-Price also is thinking about filing a lawsuit against Greenfield on First Amendment grounds, because the new ordinance, which takes effect next summer, will require the bookstore to send police a daily list of customers who sell books to them, with identification and titles sold.

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"You may be able to jump over to Greendale or West Allis, but guess what," said Fletcher, noting that with more cities adopting stricter ordinances, retailers may have trouble finding a place without restrictions.

The new code being adopted by cities around the state is based on a state law that already requires pawn shops and businesses that buy metals and jewelry to take and keep information on sellers and items. The code expands the requirements by including businesses that haven't needed to report transactions in the past and by mandating that the businesses install software from the Northeastern Wisconsin Property Reporting System and input seller identification and detailed merchandise descriptions each day. Businesses must photograph sellers and items, and they must keep the items for a set period of time - 10 to 30 days in most cities that have adopted the ordinances - before reselling them. Desch of Half-Price Books said it would be impossible to comply with that provision because of the storage space it would require.

...Use of the system is free to municipalities, but some, including Greenfield and Wausau, are imposing transaction fees on resale stores to offset policing costs.

Greenfield will require retailers to pay 50 cents for each purchase they make up to $10, a dollar for every transaction from $10 to $100, plus an extra 1% of the transaction amount for sales over $100. Wausau, which enacted its ordinance in July, is charging a flat $1.50 fee per transaction. The Wausau ordinance has no exclusions for any resale businesses and includes consignment transactions.

Part of Obama's plan to stimulate demand?  Run resale shops out of business?  Raise prices for consumers?  How many more government bodies will tack on fees?

At New to You Kids, owner Reinhardt estimates the fees will amount to $10,000 per year.

"But the fees are the tip of the iceberg," he said. The shop already keeps information on the identity of sellers, but the new ordinance will require his store to do merchandise documentation that it doesn't now do. He will need to hire two people to type product descriptions of 140,000 items per year - many of them carrying prices below $1 - into the police database. The wages for those jobs will cost him $40,000, and the store doesn't bring in enough money to offset that, Reinhardt said.

more here - http://www.jsonline.com/business/100171189.html

Running more small business out of business?

Add this to the lists of things resale shops aren't allowed to resell-electronics, baby products (beds, car seats, toys...).

Adding fuel to the disposable economy?  Just buy, buy, buy...new, new new?

When does common sense return?