Colorado’s Democratic House and Republican Senate are close to agreement on one of the priciest bills of the year – setting aside some $115 million for oil and gas producers who were wrongly overcharged for certain taxes.
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The campaign says it will sue to block the bill and is still gathering signatures to put its question on the ballot, which would ask voters to allow full-strength beer and wine sales in all grocery stores statewide.
Colorado has been debating beer in grocery stores for more than a quarter-century.
The bill was supported by the state’s Republican Attorney General and Secretary of State.
Liquor stores would also gain the new ability to become chains, but would have a cap of four locations.
The Legislature on Wednesday backed the sale of full-strength beer, wine and liquor in grocery stores, in what could be historic action.
“The voters can give us an up or a down, and if they give us a down we can continue to fund transportation at $100 million a year”, DelGrosso said of restricted funding under current law. Until then, the grocers would slowly be granted more liquor licenses, though in many cases they’ll have to buy liquor licenses from existing liquor stores.
What led to support is that smaller liquor stores, such as the Korean Liquor Retailers Association and the Ethiopian-Eritrean Liquor Association, back the bill, as do several craft brewers, the Distilled Spirits Council and the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Colorado. Large grocers who are pushing the initiative issued a blistering statement moments after the bill was sent to the governor.
Hullinghorst said that effort “kind of begins for me on Thursday” – the day after she and Cadman officially declared the 2016 regular session to have ended.
The 120th day of the 2016 legislative session ends at midnight Wednesday. “They want wine when they grocery shop”.
It’s the second year that a proposal to shake up how the ethics commission conducts its business has died in the State Affairs Committee, aka the “kill committee” (the House has its own “kill” committee with the same name).
The decades-long “beer battle” has cast a shadow over the Legislature with little progress – until now, with what is being described as a “grand bargain”.
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Hullinghorst’s bill would have re-categorized the income the state gets from a fee it charges hospitals, exempting that money from being included in the overall state revenues that are subject to annual budget growth limits set by the Colorado Constitution’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR.
