The (Anderson) Herald Bulletin
Let’s say that children in your neighborhood, maybe even your kids, decide to earn money by setting up a card table along the sidewalk to sell cups of lemonade to passersby.
Then some grouchy neighbor complains to the homeowners association or a township trustee or the local health department. Officials respond and ask the kids to display a legally obtained business license or a food handlers certification.
What, the kids don’t have a permit?
The stand is shut down.
Fortunately, this scenario doesn’t unfold in Indiana. There’s no current way for officials to freeze out a lemonade stand.
But just in case that extreme action would crop up, state Rep. Blake Johnson, D-Indianapolis, has introduced House Bill 1019 to bar health departments, counties, cities or townships from adopting a law, or enforcing one, that requires a license, permit or fee for the sale of non-alcoholic beverages from a stand on private property and operated by someone under the age of 18.
On Jan. 16, the bill was reassigned from the Committee on Public Health to the Committee on Commerce, Small Business and Economic Development.
Under the bill, kids who operate lemonade stands would need the permission of the property owner and couldn’t run the stands for more than two consecutive days or eight days in a month.
Also under the bill’s provisions, kids wouldn’t have to hire a certified food protection manager since the stands would not be considered “food establishments.”
Most of the wording of HB1019 is directed at health officials. In an indirect way, though, it’s also aimed at grumpy neighbors who are perhaps upset with the lemonade stand kid’s dad for not returning a borrowed garden hose.
While this bill intends to prevent local government interference, it seems to be state government overreaching in search of a problem. There’s just no evidence that the bill, much alone the General Assembly time involved in hearing it, is needed.
The effort was attempted before. In 2021 Rep. Jim Pressel introduced a bill that received unanimous approval by the Indiana House before dying in the Senate.
At the time, Pressel said he knew of no government interference into Hoosier lemonade stands but instead referenced an unnamed entity in Texas shutting down a stand. His bill, he said, would encourage kids to learn entrepreneurship.
An amendment was added requiring a parent to be present in public parks to help the lemonade kids avoid stranger danger. If this session’s bill moves along, that requirement would certainly be necessary.
But the bill itself seems unnecessary. There’s simply no pressing crisis to be solved.
Wasting time on a hypothetical lemonade stand controversy only adds to the sour taste that unneeded legislation leaves.
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