Photo by Maryland Route 5The District’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs released today its proposed changes to regulations governing secondhand shops. The agency also announced that it will suspend its enforcement actions against the affected businesses while the revisions are subject to public review for the next 30 days.
Under the proposed rule changes, stores that deal in merchandise like used music, books and clothing would be exempted from DCRA’s policies overseeing pawn and junk shops. The changes were first mentioned Wednesday on The Kojo Nnamdi Show by Eric Rogers, DCRA’s acting administrator in charge of business licensing.
It’s been about two months since a group of music and vintage shops in Adams Morgan were visited by a DCRA regulator and D.C. police officers and told to either obtain a costly secondhand dealer’s license or risk steep fines. Since then, DCRA officials have met with shopkeepers about modernizing the rules concerning secondhand merchants, statutes that date back to 1902.
Pawn shops in the District are required to submit daily inventory lists to the Metropolitan Police Department to be checked against a register of stolen property. And proprietors must submit to lengthy background checks, including fingerprints in triplicate.
And secondhand dealer licenses run $651.20 every two years before application and processing fees are figured in. Under the new regulations, the affected stores would require only DCRA’s standard business license, which costs $324.50.
The original version of the new rules removes those strictures from storekeepers who sell secondhand books and magazines, vinyl records and other music formats, videotapes and DVDs, pianos, rugs, clothing and works of art. Rummage sales would also be exempted, too.
But Kristen Barden, executive director of the Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District, points out that the first draft would not include stores like GoodWood, which sells vintage furniture and other home essentials. A modified, or “redline,” draft brings into the fold stores that sell home furnishings and jewelry that does not contain any precious metals or stones.
The redline version of the rule changes will replace the original Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, DCRA spokesman Helder Gil writes in an email. “We hope to have final regulations in place by late July,” he says.
The hold on enforcement against the affected shops is, of course, just as welcome as the rule changes. Though it’s been relatively quiet since the April 4 visit by DCRA and MPD, a some stores reported getting follow-up phone calls from the police, Barden says.
“An MPD officer made contact with a few of the businesses asking why they hadn’t started the application process for the secondhand dealer licenses,” she says, adding that it felt threatening.
The public comment period for the revisions to the secondhand dealer rules—Title 16, Chapter 10 of DCRA’s code, for anyone keeping score—ends June 30. Read the proposed rule changes below:
Proposed Rulemaking: Secondhand Dealer Business License Regulations
