Political Notes - Sunday sales ‘wrong,’ Perdue says
[March.13.2008]
Capitol Impact
by Tom Crawford on 3/13/2008
While he would not come right out and say he would veto it, Gov. Sonny Perdue left little doubt he’ll kill a bill (SB 454) that would authorize local governments to call referendums on Sunday package sales of alcohol.
“I think it’s
the wrong thing to do and I think it’s the wrong time to do it,” Perdue
told reporters Thursday. “I’m against it. Six days is plenty [of time]
to gather up, you’ve got refrigerators, you’ve got different places to
store [alcoholic beverages]. I think we need a little relief on Sunday.”
“I haven’t supported this in the past, I don’t now,” he said.
Perdue has
injected himself into the middle of a disagreement between the House
and Sen. Renee Unterman (R-Buford), the author of SB 454, which was
introduced to allow Sunday sales of beer at the new minor league
baseball stadium in Gwinnett County.
SB 454 was amended in a House committee Wednesday to include the Sunday sales provision over Unterman’s opposition.
Perdue said he
sided with Unterman on not adding the Sunday sales issue to her
original bill, which he indicated he would sign. He also ridiculed the
notion of allowing voters to decide whether they want to approve Sunday
sales or not.
“Governing by
referendum is somewhat hypocritical in itself,” Perdue said. “We live
in a republic and the people of Georgia send us here to make decisions.”
“Do we want to
let the people vote to choose to allow prostitution and those kinds of
things?” he asked rhetorically. “Where do we draw the line?”
Unterman held a
news conference Thursday to repeat her opposition to the amended
version of her bill, but she declined to say whether she would disagree
with the House changes in SB 454 if the bill should pass the House and
come back to the Senate.
“I’m just going to take it one day at a time,” Unterman said.
Gwinnett County
Commissioner Lorraine Green, who participated in Unterman’s news
conference, said the county’s agreement with the Atlanta Braves
provides that the Braves would keep the revenues from Sunday beer sales
at the new stadium.
“We would hate to reopen the negotiations at this late date,” Green said.
When asked if the loss of Sunday beer sales would be a deal-breaker, Green said, “I don’t think so.”
“The stadium will still be built and the Braves are still coming,” Green said.
The House is expected to vote next week on the amended version of SB 454.
“I was hoping
that we could have a clean, standalone bill [for Gwinnett County] for
their economic development project,” Perdue said. “I’m very concerned
it puts Gwinnett County’s business in jeopardy if they don’t take that
out of the bill.”
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