The Metro Council is set to take a final vote on a bill empowering the Transportation Licensing Commission to regulate Nashville’s rowdy and thriving transpotainment industry. The proposed legislation would also ban alcohol on the buses, tractors and mobile hot tubs constantly on the move up and down the city’s downtown streets.
The party vehicles are not new in the honky-tonk district, although they have grown in number along with the city’s downtown party scene. They came under new scrutiny after a man fell from and was run over by a party bus in July. (He survived but was seriously injured.)
In statements released to media on Monday, leaders of the group Safe Fun Nashville — which sprang up to push for regulations on the so-called transpotainment vehicles — urged the council to approve the bill without an amendment that includes compromise language supported by industry members. They say the proposed amendment would make allowances that hinder enforcement.
The bill — filed by Councilmember Freddie O’Connell, who represents the downtown area's District 19 — passed on second reading by a voice vote earlier this month. O'Connell has said he might bring follow-up legislation that allows alcohol on the party vehicles under certain circumstances. For now, though, the first set of regulations looks all but certain to secure final approval at Tuesday night’s meeting. Twenty-eight councilmembers have signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation. But a legal fight over the new regulations, should they pass, also looks increasingly likely.
"We support reasonable regulations, but we can’t get that," attorney Jamie Hollin tells the Scene. Hollin represents the Nashville Transportation Association, a group of transpotainment operators. He singled out Butch Spyridon, the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp CEO who has started voicing concern recently about the atmosphere on Lower Broadway after spending years as the city’s loudest tourism booster.
"Butch and his minions, including a front group with anonymous donors, are great puppeteers of our city’s legislative body,” Hollin says. “Guess we’ll have to see what survives judicial scrutiny, because they have the votes and have no interest in allowing business owners and their employees to have a voice in the process."
