A year after the Legislature lifted a statewide ban on Sunday alcohol sales, some metro Atlanta cities and counties still haven't taken the next step -- allowing their voters to decide whether to cast off the blue law.
About 60 jurisdictions held votes in November or during the Super Tuesday primary in March, with nearly all of them saying yes to seven days of package sales of beer, wine and liquor.
But 13 cities and counties -- most of them on the Southside -- have held off. Almost half of them are so small they don't have liquor stores, but they also include unincorporated south Fulton, the cities of Fairburn and Morrow, and Clayton and Fayette counties. That's left some of their residents saying they should have the same right to vote on the issue as other Georgians, as well as some businessmen complaining that inaction has cost them tens of thousands of dollars in sales.
Leaders in those communities, though, offer a number of reasons for holding off so far, including that they're too busy with other matters, that they don't consider Sunday sales a pressing issue, that they're waiting until the high-turnout presidential election in November or that few of their constituents are crying out for referendums.
When he was running for Douglasville mayor last year, Harvey Persons said the people should decide the issue. Now in office, he says what he meant was that the people should decide, through feedback to city officials, whether to hold a referendum.
"I've heard more of an expression of not wanting it than for wanting it," said Persons, who cites safety and public health concerns for opposing Sunday sales. "Show me the need. Show me the benefit. I don't see it."
County Commissioner Bill Edwards, who represents unincorporated south Fulton, took a similar position until recently, when several liquor store owners demanded a referendum.
Mike Chia and his wife, Cynthia Wong, run Lucky 7 Beverage Mart on Old National Highway. Chia estimates they've lost $75,000 this year as customers have gone elsewhere to stock up on weekends, and he might lay off two employees.
“I just feel like we’re an island in an ocean where everybody has this opportunity," Wong said.
At Edwards' prompting, the County Commission voted to add the issue to July 31 primary ballots.
Stony McGill, assistant director of the Georgia Alcohol Dealers Association, said it's puzzling that jurisdictions would still be allowing sales taxes and alcohol excise taxes to slip outside their borders.
An analysis of tax data by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows that while holdout governments aren't losing alcohol tax revenue, they missed out on the gains early birds have seen, in some cases amounting to thousands of extra dollars to fund city and county services. Cities and counties collect excise taxes from distributors that sell beer, wine and liquor in bulk to restaurants and stores. The tax on beer is 5 cents per 12 ounces for bottles and cans, or $6 for containers of no more than 15 1/2 gallons. For wine and packaged liquor, the rate is 22 cents per liter.
First-quarter collection figures show most of the Sunday sales holdouts have earned more this year than in the same period in 2011, but cities and counties with Sunday sales are generally outpacing them.
For example, Fayette County's collections are up 5.4 percent. But Sunday sales have helped boost Cherokee County's collections by 10.8 percent.
The potential losses concern Morrow Mayor J.B. Burke, but he said the city has too many problems right now, such as litigation over its signage code, to deal with a referendum in July. He wants to put it off until November.
Other officials, including Douglasville's Persons and Fairburn City Administrator Tom Barber, said the potential difference in taxes isn't enough to justify rushing Sunday sales.
Meanwhile, residents and merchants are growing restless. Some taxpayers say they resent being denied a freedom already afforded to surrounding communities.
Douglasville resident Richard Segal has set up a Facebook page called "Douglasville & Douglas County for Sunday alcohol sales." A teetotaler, Segal said he views the Sunday ban as religious beliefs infringing on personal freedoms.
"Why is Douglasville and Douglas County so far behind the rest of metro Atlanta on this?" he said. "What else are they holding us back on?"
Persons said a Facebook page isn't public outcry.
"Do you look at a blog that's got 179 ‘likes,' and you don't know who they are, where they come from, how old they are?" he said. "That's not a good way to govern."
Douglasville's City Council has now decided, though, to vote May 7 whether to hold a referendum.
For Douglas County, it's a matter of timing. In September 2009, the county held a special election on Sunday sales of liquor by the drink. Less than 2 percent of qualified voters showed up at the polls, and they defeated the measure 1,670-921.
To ensure a higher turnout, the County Commission plans to call for a referendum in November, County Administrator Eric Linton said.
For Fayette County, it's more an issue of money. Holding a special election last November, which was the first opportunity to vote after the Legislature changed the law, would have cost the county as much as $50,000.
In contrast, tacking the question on the ballot for Super Tuesday would have cost nothing, and the same goes for the July primary and this November's general election. All Georgia voters can go to the polls on those dates.
The County Commission will likely vote this month whether to hold a referendum in July, Chairman Herb Frady said.
"We're just now getting to a point where we're getting calls for it," he said. "Sometimes it takes things a long time to come to the surface out here."
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