Based on the outcome of a proposal in front of the East Baton Rouge Metro Council, wine and liquor may soon be sold on Sundays, effectively putting an end to a local blue law that bans such sales. If Councilman Darrell Ourso can secure the seven council votes necessary to pass the proposal, it will go to a parishwide vote where it is likely to be approved. According to the parish attorney’s Web site, convenience stores and retail establishments with a Class B liquor license are currently allowed to sell beer after 12:30 p.m on Sundays. The new law would allow stores with a Class B license to sell wine and liquor in addition to beer, and it would move the starting time to 11 a.m. Councilmen Ourso and Mike Walker introduced the bill in an effort to keep city-parish residents from leaving the parish to purchase wine and liquor on Sundays. The economic benefits of allowing wine and liquor sales on Sundays are quite apparent. If people leave East Baton Rouge Parish to purchase wine and liquor, the tax revenue from those sales also leave the parish. It simply does not make sense to allow a great deal of revenue to leave the parish if it can be stopped, and this proposal is a positive step forward for the parish as a whole. And because residents can currently purchase wine and liquor in restaurants after 12:30 p.m., the only real reason to outlaw these sales is to maintain what Walker called in an Advocate article the “archaic and hypocritical” distinction of Sunday as a day of worship. The current law doesn’t make sense because it does not adequately keep people from drinking on Sundays. What it does do, however, is unfairly target the business practices of liquor and convenience stores. While the proposal faces staunch opposition from Councilman Ulysses “Bones” Addison, who said the parish sells enough alcohol the other six days of the week, it deserves to pass because East Baton Rouge Parish lags behind several other parishes that have already repealed similar blue laws. If there is anything the University community takes seriously, it is the sale of alcohol in Baton Rouge. Now is the time for the University community to contact our councilmen and tell them that approval of this proposal would not only add tax revenue to the parish’s budget, it would show the rest of the state that East Baton Rouge is willing to move with the times and repeal outdated and pointless laws.
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