A boozy slap on the wrist

Let me get this straight: The Alcohol License Review Committee (ALRC) and City Council have been making a lot of hay in past years over cracking down on over-consumption and rowdy bars. They even passed an Alcohol License Density Plan to limit the number of liquor licenses available for establishments in the downtown area--and recently proposed extending it to include a ban on the sale of individual bottles of beer and "fortified wine."

But enter the Kollege Klub, a bar with a years-long record of rowdiness and missteps:

A 13-page complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court on May 6 lists multiple license violations from March 2008 through February for allowing underage people in the bar, selling liquor to intoxicated patrons, fights and other problems that make it a "disorderly house."

The incidents include what one Kollege Klub employee described as "the biggest fight he had ever seen" on Aug. 6, 2008, which was not reported to police, and a battery on the dance floor on Feb. 8, 2009, that was not reported to police and its video evidence recorded over.

...and the ALRC rolls right over for them.

Police had intended to hold a non-renewal hearing with the ALRC to bring evidence and see if it might be necessary to revoke the club's liquor license. This would have been the first such meeting in ALRC's history, something that came about as part of an effort to streamline and simplify the body's efforts at regulation and review.

Instead, Katherine Plominski (Madison's Alcohol Policy Coordinator, aka "bar czar") went ahead and cut a deal with the Kollege Klub wherein they accept "lesser sanctions" and go about their merry way, license intact. Those conditions "would require the bar to report all acts of violence to police within 48 hours and to maintain existing video cameras and save discs for 30 days." Which is good, but shouldn't they have been doing that all along? And shouldn't there be actual repurcussions for what, I suspect, is a violation of the law?

I can't help but think that, considering the bar's long history, something more than this slap on the wrist from Plominski is warranted. It also strikes me as a little bizarre that she essentially circumvented the intentions of the police, and the new type of separate nonrenewal hearing that had been set up to make the process more effective and efficient.

In general, I think the density plan was and is bogus. I don't think putting an arbitrary limit on the number of liquor licenses in a given area does much, if anything, to solve the underlying problems of binge and underage drinking or violence. If anything, it simply pushes the drinking culture into more dangerous and unregulated house party situations.

But I do believe something needs to be done about our over-drinking culture. It just seems to me that even those presumably well-meaning people in charge of policy are acting rashly and without much consideration for the complexities of the issue, as in this case.

Police have also asked that nonrenewal hearings be scheduled for three other downtown establishments: Johnny O’s Restaurant and Bar, Madison Avenue and Ram Head Rathskeller. Will Plominski or the ALRC in general cut deals with them before that can happen, though? I hope not, as it certainly seems to send the absolute wrong message to problem bars.

Here's an idea: Instead of limiting the overall number of liquor licenses, why not actually enforce existing statutes so that responsible businesses get to have their booze, and the troublemakers are actually held to account? It's hard to ask for new regulations before you actually attempt to use the ones you already have.


(photo by defekto on Flickr)

Strange Brew

Our dear leaders up at the capitol finally saw fit to pass a state budget yesterday, which is good, but only after the Democrats ceded some of the best parts of it (universal health care) and kept some of the worst parts (taking $200 million from the fund used to help pay medical malpractice awards), which is bad.

Apparently the long, drawn-out and very tedious work of doing their jobs also made the legislators very thirsty, as they slipped last-minute provisions into the budget that 1) make it legal for liquor and grocery stores to hand out free samples of hard liquor and 2) allows, as far as I can tell, that a brewer, "in providing beer to its own retail premises, is not subject to restrictions on the sale, transportation, and delivery of beer generally applicable to wholesalers and retailers."

I'm not entirely sure I understand the ramifications of the latter point, but the Madison Beer Review does a good job of laying it out for us. From what I can tell, it hurts smaller microbreweries with slightly unusual/clever distribution methods and pretty much just benefits The Great Dane.

It's always fascinating to see what little tidbits get added onto otherwise unrelated bills and/or budgets, and this is, I'm sure, just the tip of the iceberg. I'm happy we've finally even passed a damn budget, but this kind of thing has always seemed especially shady to me. No time or will for a proper debate of the subject, so something just gets passed under the radar. That seems just a little dangerous.

In the end, I'm more upset about losing what would have been the most progressive and beneficial health care program in the country than I am about beer and liquor laws, but it's all certainly worth noting. In the end, the main problem is that the majority of our lawmakers seem more concerned with lining their pocketbooks and pleasing their donors and lobbyists than they do with taking care of the people they're supposed to represent. And that's an issue we all need to take up come election time. Don't let them forget that gross incompetence on the job will result in consequences--most notably, by not getting re-elected.

P.S. Silent Sports has a great call to arms against some of the line items in the budget to do with funding yet more ATV trails in Wisconsin. Check it out and make the calls!