What Will Tomorrow's Hearing Bring?

Porn Valley- What happens tomorrow morning when the adult industry meets a labor committee from the California state assembly? Good question.

The only thing known so far is that there will be a hearing. Probably a five-hour hearing if all goes according to schedule. But the results will ultimately steer the course of the adult industry's future relative to personal safety issues as well as the adult industry's impact on California's economy.

As it stands, the industry will be meeting, for one, THE committee, consumer lobbyist Mike Ross tells me. "These are the people who look into what I loosely define as the labor practices for industries in California."

With a lot of variable and unknowns, the hearing in Van Nuys could be a crap shoot. And Ross says it's a million dollar question as to who specifically, or how many from the state will be at that hearing. But whatever the situation, Ross urges the adult industry not to shoot crap, but be forthright.

"I know that the people in the industry think all of this is a bad thing," Ross concedes. "I honestly think that it's a good thing because the biggest problem the industry has had, is that the industry is not well known."

And Ross isn't talking about nature of product per se but what he calls the economy of scale.

"The adult entertainment industry has probably $10 billion in sales and maybe has 2,000 employees including the 1,000 who are independent contractor-types," he states. "There's a lot of concepts here that people in the legislature are not really familiar with. As a result, those are the kinds of things they're going to be looking at."

The questions are going to come packaged tough and Ross re-emphasizes the need for the industry to put its best foot forward and not clamor over desks with baseball bats like a union meeting in Hoboken.

"You've seen those hearings on TV where they're looking at Enron and every little aspect of Enron trying to figure out who fucked up and who screwed who," he continues. "This is the same kind of thing. They're going to ask nuts and bolts questions to real hardcore issues like who is the one who established the policy dealing with AIDs? Who established that? I think the legislature wants to know. Somebody's going to have to be able to answer that. If somebody turns around and lies, it's only going to make the industry look worse. What the industry should be doing is relishing the opportunity to educate the community and the legislature. As a result, I urge everyone tomorrow to be honest and open and not hostile. I urge them to be friendly and work with these people. They're not your enemy. They want to make sure the industry is strong.".According to Ross, the worst thing the industry could do is tap dance around issues to the tune of a major conflict with policy makers like the public health officials.

"No way, 1000% percent tomorrow will any regulation or law be adopted," Ross assures. "It's an informational hearing. It's designed to gather information so they can work on the problem. What they're trying to do is get the players in the game to state their positions and then come out with the information so the legislature can work on fixing the problem." Ross hopes that the best case scenario coming out tomorrow's hearing is AIM, among other things, projecting its testing standards outside of Los Angeles so that policies adopted by AIM and the industry be the same throughout the rest of the state.

"Right now you have public health officers in Los Angeles who are calling for condoms-only," Ross points out. "And then you have other public health officers throughout the state that don't know what the hell to do. You can probably go into AIM, test and get your results back in 24 hours. There are other places in the state that don't have that ability. We need testing policies uniform throughout the state. That's the best scenario that could come out of this hearing."

If nothing else, says Ross, it's the first time California has ever gone into an in-depth review of the STD-related practice of the adult industry. ""It's never been done before."

From what he can foresee, Ross says there will be a series of questions posed by the labor committee.

"They're going to be asking and looking for information from issues raised in the Leslie Bill to peripheral issues that will be addressed by state health officials. Some questions are prepared and others will come directly out of testimony.

"The information that comes out of tomorrow' hearing," Ross continues, "will be gathered and be put into some kind of package for proposed legislation. It's also my understanding that the health officials are going to come out and say condoms-only. We have to protect against the outgrowth of STD's and it's going to list 25 or 30 STD's that have to be looked for. I would think that someone like Sharon Mitchell will say, you're right. We need to look for more STD's. Let's expand the tests. Let's change the pricing of the tests. Let's change how often the tests have to be made. That kind of stuff.

"I would think the only thing the industry would be upset about would be government intervention in the business and condom-mandatory," Ross goes on to say. "I don't believe that condom-mandatory is the solution because condoms don't take care of every STD."

In the final analysis, it's consultants from both parties who will wield the most clout out of this hearing says Ross.

"They'll listen to the arguments then turn around and throw out the fallacious ones and then look at the real nuts and bolts conflict issues. For somebody to say we're just going to move out of California if it goes condom-mandatory, that's going to make the consultants shake their heads because consultants have already told me they don't believe that.

"They're also going to listen to medical officials. They're going to listen to the industry. They're hopefully going to listen to some of the talent if the talent comes to testify. I don't know who's going to come to testify. I was read a list but I specifically don't know what everybody's going to say.

"What they hope to find out is all the ABC's, the plusses and minuses of the issue which can then be transformed and put back in the bill if needed. Like what will be the impact of this policy on consumers? Right now there's no way to judge what impact new health policies will have on Los Angeles. What's that going to mean to jobs? What's that going to mean to incomes and businesses, and, by that I mean the regular jobs- like printing and packaging.

"I do know that there's going to be other legislation along these lines but it's all going to be based on what happens at this hearing. But one of the things that I'm convinced of after talking to these people [the consultants] is that no one is going to buy the story that if legislation is adopted, that the adult industry is going to be moved out of California. No one is going to buy that and if anyone leads with that argument, I think that's a false one and a red herring and it's going to make the industry look worse. Stick with the facts. Don't be argumentative. Make sure you answer the questions. Make sure you answer them fully. Make sure that you participate and you show that you want to work.

"I don't want the industry to walk into this and totally piss everybody off. I want them to work and cooperate with the state. Especially the talent. The talent should not be afraid of being able to speak its mind because the talent is the most important factor in this. They're the ones who give the consumers the enjoyment. And without the talent, the consumers are hurt and the companies are hurt.

"I urge the industry to be honest and do all the positive things to make themselves look better. And I think they can do it if it's done right."