HB-1192 Slayed
Carol White - March 12, 2009
It began with hundreds of people gathering on the midday Capitol steps yesterday in what was thought to be the largest crowd yet assembled to protest a bill in the 2009 Colorado legislative session.
The signs proclaimed: Teenagers Shouldn't Sell Alcohol! Save Colorado Jobs! No On HB1192! The stickers read: Colorado Beer = Colorado Jobs!
What was all the fuss about?
The House Business Affairs & Labor Committee was about to hear testimony on HB 09-1192 which would eliminate 3.2% beer from the marketplace. It seemed like a simple statute to eliminate an outdated product, but the law had serious implications for small business owners, beer lovers and consumers all across Colorado..
In the Old Supreme Court room one side of the standing-room-only crowd was a sea of red and black 7-11 shirts. The other side sported US flag stickers. Still more people packed an additional overflow room with an audio feed provided, and many others milled around in the hallway outside. This was an intense crowd. By the end of the day, there would certainly be winners and losers.
Proponents of the bill - Convenience Store (C-Store) owners, Grocery Stores, and representatives from the Colorado Petroleum Marketers Association - duked it out in over 7 hours of testimony with the opposition, consisting of liquor store owners, craft brewers, Colorado wineries,and Colorado MADD, to name a few.
The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Buffie MacFadyen, D - Pueblo, laid the groundwork for the arguments to follow. "You will hear testimony that this bill will endanger public safety. That it will hurt industry members. But there has been controversial legislation before ." She reminded everyone of previous legislation that passed in 1976, controversial at the time, that allowed Restaurant and Hotel owners to have more than one liquor license at the same address.
At the time, opponents thought it would hurt the Mom and Pop restaurants, but, MacFadyen says, they survived. She went on to acknowledge the successful Colorado craft brewing industry. "This legislation will enrich them." She said this bill would provide the opportunity to introduce craft beer to grocery and convenience stores. She noted that liquor enforcement shows fewer violations of convenience stores selling to under age drinkers than liquor stores. She ended her comments by requesting that all testimony use factual information.
The facts started to fly.
Convenience store owners pleaded their case: that since July, when the Sunday liquor store law passed, 3.2% beer sales have dropped significantly, along with other items that people would buy when they came in for beer. As committee member Rep. Balmer put it, "C-stores took it in the teeth".
They want to be able to sell full beer to be competitive. Sandip Mali, an owner of two 7-Eleven stores in the Denver Area, said that his beer sales are down as much as 80% and has led to layoffs of 2 to 3 people in each store. "All I want is to recapture the losses". Another owner of multiple gas station/C-stores in the state said, "I have had to adapt, innovate, and change. I want liquor stores to do the same".
"Level the playing field", "Even the playing field", "If we had a fair playing field", were the cries of the bill's supporters. The opposition included liquor store owners, Colorado craft brewers, a Colorado wine maker, and a representative from MADD. Their arguments centered around how much the proposed legislation would hurt liquor stores. A spokesman for Summit Economics, the consulting firm that performed a market analysis of the effect of HB1192, stated that 40 - 50% of liquor stores in Colorado would fail in the next 5-10 years with passage of this bill. $15 million would be lost annually in tax revenue.
Based on these figures, Eric Wallace of Lefthand Brewing Co. predicted dire consequences for the craft beer industry in Colorado. "We are the number one craft beer state in the nation", he said. " Our industry has created 2500 jobs since 1993. We lose liquor stores, we lose our marketplace".
Jack Sosebee of Del Norte Brewing Company stated it would be a "significant impact". As a relatively new packaging brewer, he approached Safeway about carrying his beer. "I was told that we would have to go to California to persuade the buyers (Safeway) to carry our beer. Do we really want buyers in California deciding which Colorado craft beers to sell in our state?"
After all the back and forth, a committee vote late in the evening made it official. HB1192 was dead, "postponed indefinitely" by a vote of 8-3 -- not 7-4 as has been reported incorrectly by other news organizations -- with Balmer, Liston and Casso voting in favor of the bill. For now, the battle over HB 1192 is finished, but the war against 3.2 beer and the antiquated Colorado liquor code is far from over.
As always, we will continue to keep you posted.
