House panel OKs county vote option on groceries, big retailers selling liquor

TOPEKA – By the narrowest of margins, a House committee breathed life into a bill to allow county-by-county votes on whether to let grocery and big-box stores sell full-strength alcoholic beverages.

The House Committee on Commerce, Labor and Economic Development voted Monday to replace the original “Uncork Kansas” bill with the county-election option.

It was the first legislative test for the county option and sets up a showdown vote in the committee Tuesday afternoon on whether to send the measure to the full House.

The original “Uncork” bill, which would have changed the law statewide with no local input, has been largely stalled in both the House and the Senate.

Monday’s vote to move forward with the county option was initially tied at 7-7, with two abstentions. The committee chairman, Mark Hutton, R-Wichita, cast the tie-breaking vote to keep the measure alive.

Hutton, who said he favors a more open market for liquor, supported the original bill. He’s not a big fan of the county option.

“I looked at it as a compromise,” he said.

Now, grocery, big-box and convenience stores can sell only beer and flavored coolers with an alcohol content of 3.2 percent or less.

The retooled bill would allow each county to vote on whether to loosen that restriction.

An election could be called by a majority vote of a county commission or by a petition with signatures equal to 10 percent of the voters who cast ballots in the last election for secretary of state.

If the voters approved such a proposal, a grocery store or big-box store that sells groceries would be able to buy a liquor license from a retailer in the same county and begin selling full-strength beer, wine and spirits.

Convenience stores would be allowed to apply for a different license to sell full-strength beer.

The case for the county-option bill was carried primarily by David Dillon, the former chairman and chief executive of the Ohio-based Kroger store chain that owns the Dillons stores in Kansas.

Dillon told the committee that county-by-county voting on liquor issues is a time-honored and appropriate tradition in Kansas because of the diversity of views across the state.

“Secondly, it also answers the question of do voters really want this legislation passed,” Dillon said. “We’ve run polls and others have done some of that, but that doesn’t always answer the question. This is how you actually know are the voters really in favor of this. And if they’re not really in favor of this, then it will go down.”

E. “Tuck” Duncan, general counsel for the Kansas Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association, said the county option was considered earlier and rejected by both sides, because it’s impossible to confine the effect to the counties that vote in favor of grocery store and big-box liquor.

“You’re going to have those stores in the big counties that opt in who are going to end up with a large base,” he said. “And those stores that are close to those stores, in other counties that don’t opt in, are going to be out of business.”

Amy Campbell, who testified for the Kansas Association of Beverage Retailers, said the rewritten bill would contain more stringent rules for stand-alone liquor stores, further tilting the playing field in favor of larger chain stores.

“This proposal seems to place all the same restrictions on the liquor stores in the future but not on the big stores purchasing their licenses,” she said. “That is a huge problem. It simply ensures your corporate-dominated field and probably greatly inflates the number of (independent liquor) stores you’re going to lose.”

That led Campbell into an exchange with Rep. Scott Schwab, R-Olathe, who said most other small businesses don’t have the kind of business certainty that government regulation now guarantees independent liquor stores.

“Why should we allow the statute to allow a protected market (in liquor) when nobody else gets that?” Schwab said.

“I’m not asking you to protect us, I’m asking you to be fair,” Campbell replied.

This story was originally published May 4, 2015 at 7:02 PM with the headline "House panel OKs county vote option on groceries, big retailers selling liquor."