DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL — Supporters of an effort to put restrictions around the forthcoming sale of full-strength beer in all grocery and convenience stores scrambled to save a Colorado legislative bill late Monday, knowing that the alternative would be a major change in state alcohol policy without any guardrails.
Over the course of an emotional and sometimes confrontational hearing in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, liquor-store owners pleaded that grocers and convenience-store operators be placed on an equal regulatory plane with them, while those grocery and convenience chains said that Senate Bill 243 would interfere with their efforts to expand under a 2016 compromise law. Sen. Vicki Marble, the committee chairwoman, called out several opponents of the bill, saying one was “quite myopic,” and warned that the allowance of increased sales of beer by grocers in particular would lead to the downfall of the craft-beer industry — even as the Colorado Brewers Guild opposed the bill.
In the end, Marble, R-Fort Collins, postponed a vote on the bill as she and its sponsors tried to figure out a way to avoid sending it to the Senate Finance Committee, where opponents said they had the votes to kill SB 243. And the measure by Republican Senate Majority Leader Chris Holbert of Parker and Democratic Assistant Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman of Denver remains in limbo with just 15 days to go before the Legislature must adjourn its 2018 session.
“It’s very important and has a lot of tentacles to it,” Guzman said shortly before the aborted vote effort. “I know we have a long way to go still.”
Read more at the Denver Business Journal: https://bit.ly/2Fdrnzb
