It's that time of year, when the Legislature takes its favorite alcohol-related bills and rolls them into one.
The liquor omnibus is one of the more fun bills, as omnibus bills go. It's often about things like wine tastings and craft brew festivals and whether beer should be sold at University of Minnesota football games.
This year's House and Senate bills are most notable for the items that didn't make it into the hopper. No wine in grocery stories. Nothing about Sunday liquor sales. A bill by Sen. Sandra Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, that would have allowed 18- to 20-year-olds to drink in bars when accompanied by their parents almost made it into the Senate omnibus, only to be stripped out at the last minute.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) spent $200,000 on lobbying last year, but its bill to require Minnesota wholesalers to buy directly from distilleries still didn't make the cut.
Minnesota is the only state that doesn't require merchants to buy from the source, and DISCUS argued that could open the state up to liquor counterfeiters and other ills. The Minnesota Liquor Wholesalers Association, which spent $70,000 on lobbying in 2011, countered with the argument that sometimes buying from other wholesalers is just cheaper -- and they pass that cost savings on to their customers.
"I just feel we're a little too provincial and parochial in our attitude" toward alcohol in Minnesota, said Pappas, who is already gearing up for next session's liquor bills. Among other things, she'd like to push a bill that would allow Minnesota's brew pubs to bottle and sell their beer.
The bills that did make it into the omnibus include an attempt to resolve the dispute over beer sales at U football games. The U wanted to sell beer only to patrons in the suites at TCF Bank Stadium, but not in the lower levels.
The House compromise offered by Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, would allow beer sales in the suites, as well as a beer garden for the general public below.
