Sunday Liquor Laws in Ohio Hurt Small Business
Background
Ohio currently requires a special D-6 license to sell liquor on Sundays, which requires voters in the precinct with which the business resides to approve the sale of liquor on Sundays. Once voters in that precinct approve a D-6, any and all liquor licence holders in that precinct are eligible to get a D-6 license. I am a co-owner of a small business (Terry's Tavern) in Zanesville, Ohio. We are the only bar within our precinct, which ends just a quarter mile down the road. Our competition enjoys the ability to dispense liquor freely on Sundays, while we are limited to serving beer and other bottled low alcohol beverages. Why is this a big deal? Customers like to drink their drink of choice and not be limited to certain beverages on specific days. Why should Sunday be any different? After all, customers can drink beer and bottled low alcohol beverages. If their object is to get inebriated, they can easily do this with the other alcoholic beverages available.
D-6: A Time Consuming and Cumbersome Process
In order to obtain a D-6 Sunday sales permit in Ohio you must first get on the ballot. In order to do that, you need to go to your local board of elections and find out what precinct your business is in. You also need to apply for a D-6 license at that time with the state of Ohio and pay the fee (this fee applies whether or not your petition is successful and is non-refundable). This is a time intensive process, and I personally had well over 100 hours of my time invested in the unsuccessful effort to get on the ballot.
What's Being Done and What Can You Do?
Ohio is currently proposing legislation (House Bill 219) to allow Sunday sales to any current liquor permit holder. The bill could use your support. Write your local representative. Click Here to find your representative and send them an email.
PushBack From Special Interests
Special interests are pushing back. You might be surprised to find out that a whole cottage industry revolves around Sunday liquor in Ohio. One of these companies was so kind as to send me a lots of postcards when I first bought my bar. That company is YIC Consultants. Bob Young has established a business that sells local-option campaigns to businesses in Ohio. Bob provided his testimony in December 2019 opposing Ohio House Bill 219. Bob portrays the local liquor option petition process as a simple one through his testimony. Through personal experience the process is anything but simple. In fact, it's monumentally time consuming. In trying to pass a local option for Terrys Tavern, I spent a minimum of 100 hours between filing paperwork and going door to door with petitions. In the end we failed to garner enough "valid" signatures to get on the ballot. Our local Muskingum county board of elections threw out too many signatures due to "signature mismatch", even though we purposefully used the registered voter list to visit only homes of registered voters and verified the name listed against the signature provided. This was really aggravating because we had a lot of extra signatures, yet the petition was still turned down. We don't have enough money to hire a lawyer because as most bar owners know, margins are slim in the booze slinging industry. Bob pointed out in his testimony that one of the local option petitions done for one customer cost a mere $3,000.00. That money could be used for much better purposes.
About Me
I am from Cincinnati, Ohio and have part ownership in Terry's Tavern in Zanesville, Ohio. I have started this website on my own time and at my own expense after experiencing first hand the frustration of Sunday liquor permitting in Ohio. I hope you will join me in supporting this legislation.
Chris Cameron
Terry's Tavern