The origins of some of South Carolina’s most outrageous super-spreader incubators go back, according to Sen. Dick Harpootlian’s calculations, to 1992, when “a smarta– and brave lawyer indicted two of ABC’s three commissioners” on charges of public corruption.
The eventual convictions coincided with a series of other state and federal corruption investigations that resulted (among many other changes) in the dismantling of the autonomous Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission and the transfer of alcoholic beverages regulation to the state Revenue Secretariat, which had other functions to keep her busy and stood still while university bar districts sprouted and flourished.
The lawyer Mr. Harpootlian accuses for triggering the chain of events that spawned the bar districts in Columbia, Charleston and elsewhere was … Dick Harpootlian. He ran for the Senate a quarter of a century later, largely because of frustration with the Revenue Department’s unwillingness to shut down autonomous bars in his neighborhood, which seem to clearly violate a state constitutional provision that limits sales of alcoholic beverages to restaurants and hotels.
I don’t know how much blame for the proliferation lies in the dismantling of the ABC Commission and how much in the parents who started sending their kids to college with credit cards, creating a more profitable night bar market than today’s adults with. Or with Harpootlian and his neighbors – and his colleagues in other university towns – who paid very little attention until their family restaurant and business district passed the tipping point. As an outstanding round of challenges for licensing alcoholic beverages in Columbia demonstrates, neighbors have some influence on the issue.
Cindi Ross Scoppe
But it is an intriguing proposition.
More intriguing is the bill that the Democrat of Columbia presented on Tuesday, to clarify what regulators called ambiguity in state law that they never tried to resolve. He has a Republican co-sponsor, is building support between religious conservatives and drunken opponents, argues that his project is less severe than what the SC Court of Appeals could impose on hearing one of his lawsuits next month and saying who is fulfilling his oath to defend the constitution.
In 1972, a campaign of hotels and restaurants convinced voters to amend the state constitution to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises, but only in companies that “are mainly and substantially dedicated to the preparation and service of meals or provision of accommodation. . ”In 2004, opponents, hotels and restaurants who drunk drove convinced voters to amend the constitution again, to allow those same establishments to sell alcoholic beverages in normal-sized bottles instead of minibots.
But while the legislature added the language of the constitution to state law, it was not concerned after any of the changes in writing a clear definition of “mainly and substantially”. Does that mean 90%? Or 70%? Or just 50%? Because no one could argue that it means less than that. Well, unless you have a business that makes most of the money from alcohol. Or you work in the Revenue Department.
In 1979, the state Supreme Court supported the old ABC Commission by rejecting an application for an alcohol license for a bowling alley that earned 10% of its money from food; since then, a decision on the matter has not been requested, initially because other companies have not contested license rejections and, more recently, because the IRS has distributed licenses as lollipops. The agency argued in court that it is unclear what “primary and substantially” means.
S.536 would provide clarity, at 51%.
For comparison, Virginia requires alcohol licensees to obtain 45% of their food revenue, and North Carolina 30% – any of which, like Harpootlian’s bill, would destroy the Five Points bar district of Columbia, along with university bar districts across the state. The 51% requirement would likely close bars along King Street and an insignificant number of upscale bars in Charleston and along Greenville’s Main Street.
There is no good reason why alcohol laws should be incorporated into the state constitution – and many reasons why they should not be. Nor is it a good practice for regulators to allow companies to open and then change the rules and force them to close.
But these alcohol laws are in the constitution and are very clear, even if bar owners and regulators want to pretend they are not. And when regulators allow companies to operate in violation of the constitution, it is the job of the legislature to correct them.
Which is what he needs to do here – clarifying the law or amending the constitution, or both.
The deals that Mr. Harpootlian described for the Columbia state newspaper as nothing more than “large rooms with a bar at one end, a concrete floor, a shit band or a DJ”, fueling all the toxic culture of minors and drunks, have been informed since 2019 – after the senator won a first instance decision denying the liquor license to an establishment that obtained only 5% of its food revenue – that the courts or the IRS would start enforcing the law .
These bars were a plague to neighboring neighborhoods and their customers before the existence of COVID-19. Since their arrival, they have become a significant threat to public health, with young people in their 20s packed side by side without a mask, waiting to enter where they can spread the virus even more effectively.
Legislating its existence would not be a bad thing.
Cindi Ross Scoppe is a writer for The Post and Courier. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Facebook or Twitter @cindiscoppe.