By: Diane Benjamin

Last night’s meeting featured extensive public comments from licensed massage therapists, who were livid upon learning that the ordinance to combat human trafficking would also require a city license for them—adding, of course, another fee. The staff that proposed it overreached and the Council failed to immediately fix it.

They already pay the State for a license. They are required to take Human Trafficking training. They are required to pay for continuing education to keep that State license.

Already licensed massage therapists should be exempt from a City license if they have a State license. The City wants to license massage establishments instead of individuals. The new ordinance doesn’t differentiate between establishments with only licensed therapists and those with zero. They want everyone buying a license.

Legitimate establishments with licensed therapists should be exempt. Our legal system doesn’t require people to prove they aren’t breaking the law. Investigators have to prove they are. Bloomington, just like the State of Illinois, must despise business. Tax it until it stops moving. This is weaponizing government against people doing nothing wrong.

This ordinance as written does exactly what has happened in every other city. It punishes good therapists helping to heal people while chasing traffickers out. Of course they take the people being trafficked with them.

The ordinance was tabled for two weeks so “stakeholders” could be heard. Nobody is going to hear from the victims of massage parlors. That practice will continue behind locked doors.

Just hit play to hear from a State licensed therapist who was so upset she had to stop part way through her comment. There are more speakers before and after her. At 28:30 the owner of the Olive Bin recounts how an illegal massage parlor used to be next door and what she saw. Heartbreaking.