I’ve been away from The Blog for a couple of days. During the past week, my oldest kid graduated from High School this weekend and my wife had an emergency gall bladder removal surgery. Other priorities.
But now I’m back, and talking about liquor issues again. This time it is about the new later bar closing time law. There was a good story about the new law in this morning’s Star Tribune.
During the recent legislative session, the State Legislature authorized bars in Minneosta to stay open until 2:00 a.m., under a couple of conditions. Current closing time for bars in Minnesota, in case you haven’t made it all the way to closing time lately, is 1:00 a.m. The two conditions are simple. First, the City must authorize 2:00 a.m. bar closing time. Second, the bar owner must apply for and receive a special permit from the State. The permit fees taken in by the State will be used to provide extra State Patrol officers to supervise the highways during the middle of the night.
The Eden Prairie City Council will be discussing the new bar closing law at its June 17th meeting. I am not aware of any Council discussion on this issue yet, so I’m not sure how it might go. I am interested in a statement on this issue from the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce. They will be meeting this week to talk about it. Chambers of Commerce were particularly strong advocates for the adoption of the legislation at the State Legislature.
I am not sure how I feel about it. When I was a young man in Iowa in the 1980’s, I spent 4 years tending bar, off and on, during my college and pre-college days. There is no doubt in my mind, based on my personal experience anyway, that a 2:00 a.m. closing time will produce more people who are more drunk than the current 1:00 a.m. closing time. That does not mean that all of these people will be hopping into their cars and driving home or elsewhere. Public safety officials are concerned about an expected upswing in OWI arrests, and the long trail of problems created for people with OWI on their records.
But, as with the new handgun laws, we’ll just have to see how it works out. It is indeed possible that people will ast responsibly with this new freedom.
