Kentucky- In the past few weeks, rumors have been floating around Covington that Jimmy Flynt was taking steps to locate a strip club or Hustler store in the city.

Reached in California, Jimmy Flynt, brother of Hustler mogul Larry Flynt, said there was no truth to the rumors that he and his adult-entertainment empire, Hustler Inc., planned to crack the Northern Kentucky market.

Even if the rumors had been true, officials say the region has more leverage to block such businesses than they did a year ago.

Garry Edmondson, who is heading a group to study ways to regionalize sexually oriented business zones, said most of the major at-risk cities in Kenton County are protected by a moratorium instituted last summer that prevents the county and many of its cities from establishing new sexually oriented business zones.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that communities must zone for sexually oriented businesses. If they don’t, the high court has said, those businesses may open wherever they wish.

Edmondson believes that Kenton and Campbell counties may be designated as one “community” so that smaller cities with limited property — such as Villa Hills and Highland Heights — don’t have to establish adult business zones of their own.

A moratorium was instituted after communities in Northern Kentucky began establishing such zones out of fear that it they did not, adult businesses could open wherever they wished.

As part of the adult business moratorium, no sexually oriented businesses may locate in the participating communities — whether sexually oriented business zones currently exist there or not — until the moratorium expires on May 15, 2004, giving officials time to develop their zoning regulations before the businesses move in.

Covington, along with Kenton County and nine of its other cities, approved the moratorium earlier this year.

The Flynts have Hustler store outlets in Monroe, Ohio, downtown Cincinnati and three in California.