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Sunday, March 16, 2008
Why a Gwinnett stadium might become a giant restaurant. With one heckuva floor show
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the debate over Sunday sales of alcohol, they’re close to fisticuffs.
The governor has threatened a veto. The House speaker has promised an override.
One insider at the state Capitol declared it might be time to issue rubber bracelets stamped with “WWJD.” As in, “Where Would Jesus Drink?”
Gov. Sonny Perdue is now leader of the Republican faction that says Sunday consumption of beer at a yet-to-be-built, minor league baseball stadium in Gwinnett County is a matter of economic development.
However, buying the same substance at a grocery or convenience store on the same day — that would be social policy, and thus unacceptable, the governor argues. God made refrigerators for a reason.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson, representing the business-libertarian side of the GOP, has declared the governor’s logic to be a kind of ethical quicksand. “Once you say you’re OK with Sunday sales at a Braves game or Sunday sales in limousines…I don’t know how you have a moral ground,” Richardson argued.
For those of you who have waited until the third inning to find your seats, a brief review is in order.
Your state Senate has passed a bill to permit the sale of Sunday beer at a new stadium Gwinnett County is building for a Braves minor league team. It is a small, technical patch in the state code.
Currently, only cities may permit stadiums in their jurisdictions to sell beer on Sunday. But the Gwinnett stadium will be in unincorporated territory ruled by the county.
A House committee last week tacked on a provision that would allow local communities throughout Georgia to hold referendums on whether to permit Sunday sales of beer and wine. A House floor vote is all but certain, and chances of passage are good.
State Sen. Renee Unterman (R-Buford) protests House committee decision to attach a provision permitting referendums for Sunday beer and wine sales to her Braves stadium legislation. Elissa Eubanks/AJC
If the Senate should fail to agree, or if it does and Perdue vetoes the measure, the Gwinnett Braves could be blocked from offering alcohol on Sunday.
Gwinnett officials say the legislation isn’t critical to their negotiations with the Braves. But their angst belies this. Even the most conservative math says that, over a 30-year contract, Sunday sales of alcohol would be worth several million dollars to the club.
But back to those charges of hypocrisy, now flying back and forth in hordes at the Capitol, numerous as winged monkeys in Oz and just as ugly.
In fact, some inconsistencies are worth noting.
Only last year, Richardson was a no-Sabbath-beer loyalist. “As a general rule, most people go to church of whatever faith on Sunday. And we don’t sell beer on Sundays. It’s just one of those traditions,” the House speaker said in 2007.
But Richardson’s chamber just approved a November ballot measure asking voters to eliminate property taxes on vehicles. It’s difficult to argue that you trust the average Georgian to rewrite the state budget, but not to decide what day of the week he or she might buy a six-pack.
For his part, Perdue has declared this government-by-referendum to be an abandonment of responsibility by the Legislature.
“We live in a republic, and the people of Georgia send us here to make decisions,” the governor said last week. “Do we want to let the people vote to choose to allow prostitution and those kinds of things?”
This from the same fellow who proposed a referendum on the state flag, and stood behind the 2004 popular vote to insert a ban on gay marriage into the state constitution.
The difference is that a decision to weaken Georgia’s biggest blue law might anger the state GOP’s conservative Christian base — at a time when a national Democratic surge in November already threatens several state House and Senate seats held by Republican incumbents.
At a Senate Republican caucus meeting last week, President pro tem Eric Johnson of Savannah picked out polling conducted in Republican-held districts judged to be most vulnerable.
The Sunday sale of beer and wine is a loser in each of those districts, Johnson privately told his colleagues. And the intensity is on the side of the opposition.
In political terms, this means that Sabbath sales of beer and wine could become, like John McCain, a reason for some Republican voters to sit at home.
We understand that the impasse has set some Gwinnett officials to wondering. Restaurants in unincorporated Gwinnett are permitted to sell alcohol, as long as food sales outweigh liquid ones.
This minor league stadium, that thinking goes, could be declared a giant restaurant. With a spacious floor show.
