Home Depot Amendment on Home Services

Dec

Home Depot Amendment

posted by admin in Home Depot

Squatting beside the bulk of the Senate immigration bill a once-in-a-generation attempt to change millions of lives and the direction of the nation you will find a squalid little amendment. It was placed there by Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia to benefit an Atlanta-based corporate constituent, Home Depot.

The amendment would prohibit state and local laws that required big home-improvement stores to provide rudimentary shelter for day laborers. There arent any such laws yet, but the City Council in Los Angeles, where Home Depot wants to open 13 stores, is considering one. Mr. Isaksons pre-emptive strike would be an extraordinary intrusion of federal power into a local land-use matter.

Home Depot is a magnet for day laborers. Small contractors and homeowners load up on lumber, drywall and buckets of screws, and then grab a crew. Communities have struggled to deal with these often-untidy labor bazaars where looking for work can be hard to distinguish from loitering.

The combative approach, with anti-loitering laws and police harassment, seldom works and has been overturned repeatedly in the courts. The Los Angeles City Council is considering something more constructive, an ordinance that would charge big retail chains that attract day laborers Home Depot, essentially about $200,000 per store to provide a bare-bones space with shade, benches and toilets, to bring some order, cleanliness and safety to the daily mixing of men and trucks.

The ordinance treats day labor as a measurable and inevitable effect of Home Depots buy-in-bulk business. Just as stores must obtain conditional-use permits, operate at certain hours and install lights and signs to mitigate traffic and other problems they cause, Home Depot would have to help make its stores safer and less unsightly. But after more than two years of discussions with Home Depot, council members were stunned to learn that the companys backdoor lobbying had gotten Mr. Isaksons proposal onto the short list of Republican amendments for the Senates climactic debate next week.

Supporters say the amendment is germane to the immigration debate, but its not. Day labor is often a path for illegal immigrants, but not every day laborer is illegal, or even an immigrant. As long as there are homes and homeowners and Home Depots, day laborers will be with us, and local governments will need the authority to respond to them.

Mr. Isakson pulled his support for the immigration bill on Wednesday, because he doubted it was ambitious enough to seal the Mexico border. Now he wants the Senate to minutely tweak the grand bargain to allow his friends at Home Depot the countrys second-largest retailer, and a campaign contributor to save some pocket change and to shuck off responsibility for the unruliness in its parking lots to its customers and neighbors.