Unfortunately, The Best Ideas For Laws Are The Ones That Are The Least Likely To Work

Tired of hearing how “there oughta be a law,” a Queens Council Member finally comes up with some useful legislation:

Tired of those unwanted circulars on your front porch, or worse yet, carelessly thrown in your yard? A Bayside lawmaker might have a solution.

Councilman Tony Avella was expected to introduce a bill Wednesday that calls for a “do not circulate” registry so that homeowners can opt-out from getting the unwanted advertisements.

Avella said this would be similar to the Do Not Call Registry that prevents people from getting unwanted phone calls from telemarketers. “The time has come for the city to create a ‘do not circulate’ registry whereby property owners can choose to register their names and stop the unwanted delivery of circular advertisements,” Avella said.

Under the proposal, residents will be able to put their name on a list maintained by the Department of Consumer Affairs, which will be distributed to advertisers. If the distributors don’t comply, a fine would be levied.

“We would have to work out the terms and details with the department,” Avella said. “I think it would be well worth it.”

. . .

The bill would also target fliers left by such businesses as local Chinese take-out restaurants and pizzerias. “It would take a little effort on the part of these businesses to find out what households have opted out, and the Department of Consumer Affairs would have to do a lot of outreach for this to be successful,” Avella said.

Better yet, DCA could maintain a database on cheap Chinese take-out restaurants that would eliminate the need to even have menus, since all those places have the same exact food anyway!