When I attended the Alcohol License Review Committee meeting last Wednesday (July 16), one sentence stood out to me more than the rest. The committee discussed guidelines for operating licenses for bartenders and liquor vendors, the notification system for new licenses and license changes and did their usual grilling of prospective license holders, but it was during the review of one questionable bartender's license that I heard this sentence.

What I heard was committee chair David Hart say to the rest of the ALRC prior to the candidate's testimony that he gave her a business card for a lawyer in case she would want or need to appeal the decision the ALRC handed down last night.

The candidate was a young woman with three underage drinking tickets and one OWI, offenses that would under the guidelines passed that same night likely result in a denied license. She came to explain herself, though, and mentioned that two of her three underage tickets came when she had been with her parents - one after she had been drinking with them, and one when she had simply carried a bottle of wine for her parents. She also said that she had not been drinking since completing her alcohol education course for the OWI, which ended a few months before the meeting. The committee, missing a few members that night, voted 2-1 to deny the license.
I have attended about half-dozen ALRC meetings and had never heard a member give a license candidate advice about getting a lawyer, so I assumed he may have thought she had a decent chance for appeal with proper proof that she did not have a drinking problem and could be a responsible license holder.

No one at the meeting brought anything up about Hart's comment, and he certainly did not try to hide his actions, so I assumed at the time it was not that big of a deal. This week, however, I found out that the assistant city attorney, Steve Brist, who attends ALRC meetings for the city talked to Hart about the interaction and asked him to refrain from doing so again.

It makes sense that the city would not want its committee members, particularly the chairs of committees, to do things that would appear to go against the decisions of those committees, but Hart also raised an interesting point. As a lawyer for the Department of Justice, he said he had seen judges frequently tell those charged with crimes that they needed a lawyer and gave them a list of contacts, and he didn't see what he was doing as all that different. However, unlike at the DoJ, the ALRC is at times both the prosecutors and the judges of potential license-holders. Moreover, as only one person on a seven-member voting body, Hart's actions may not always reflect the rest of the body's thoughts and opinions on the subject.

Hart understood this and readily agreed not to personally give out lawyer contacts anymore, but when I asked if he thought license candidates should still have help getting in touch with a lawyer if need be, he said "yes." One option, which he agreed was a possibility, would be to provide candidates with the contact information either upfront when they turn in an application, or, provided that the City Council passes the operator's license guidelines on Aug. 5, to give the information in the letter that would be sent to license candidates who under the guidelines would likely be denied.

Doing it this way would solve two problems. One, it would serve as an action from the committee, rather than a single member, to provide this information, and two, it would clear up any doubt about how the guidelines would function. During the discussion on the guidelines, Brist and a few committee members were concerned the guidelines would be seen as a decision made before the committee met to discuss and vote, which is not the case. What the guidelines are meant to do is warn candidates likely to be denied of that fact in case they do not want to come before the committee to air their dirty laundry if they will likely be denied anyway. This doesn't mean candidates, particularly those who can legitimately prove their rehabilitation, shouldn't feel free to come before the ALRC if they want to, but it serves as a notice of what's ahead.

As a somewhat tangential side note, in a conversation with alcohol policy coordinator Katherine Plominski, she mentioned that the ALRC is one of, if not the best-watched show on the Madison City Channel. The City Channel began taping the show last year at the request of Ald. Michael Schumacher, who wanted to bring more transparency to the committee's meetings. MCC station manager Brad Clark couldn't confirm how well-watched the show was because they don't track viewership numbers, but if anyone has any anecdotal information about whether the show catches your eye and if so, why, feel free to let me know.