Roy Maynard: Early Returns

It's not about the booze.

That's the most important thing to know about the proposed local option election that would change the way alcohol is sold in Tyler restaurants.

Instead, the ballot initiative that could go to voters in May is about government bureaucracy. It's not about morality or public health. It's about record-keeping.

Wet-dry elections have always been rough-and-tumble affairs in Texas politics, but, for this key reason, this shouldn't be like that. It won't allow sales of alcohol for off-site consumption (beer stores). This isn't that kind of election.

The change being proposed will not make it easier to buy alcohol or consume alcohol. It won't make minors any more likely to drink. It won't make drinkers any more likely to drive.

In fact, because it could free up resources at the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, there could be more enforcement of alcohol regulations.

What we're talking about is the antiquated "private membership" requirements that some counties and cities, including Tyler, adopted as an alternative to going "wet" or remaining completely "dry." It allows restaurants and bars to sell alcohol, as long as the customer is a member of its private club. Who is a member? Anyone who wants to be. Keeping up with "membership" is a nightmare for both the business owner and the state officials who have to police it.

And the private membership provision, if you will pardon the expression, is a little like falling between the barstools. It has resulted in Smith County famously being the wettest dry county in the state. It doesn't accomplish the public health goals of temperance - people are still drinking, and some of them are going to drink intemperately. It doesn't accomplish the goals of the "wets," because there's significant infringement on how alcohol is sold, if not consumed.

How did we get here? The politics of prohibition in Texas have followed a staggering, lurching path that began as soon as Texas won its independence, the ever-helpful "Handbook of Texas Online" recounts.

The first local option laws that were passed weren't to allow alcohol sales; they were to prohibit it. The Drys, as the temperance advocates were called in early Texas, leveraged those elections into a statewide ban on saloons in 1845.

But this is Texas. For the most part, no one even tried to enforce that ban. It was repealed in 1856.

In the late 1800s, the dry movement resurged, with the United Friends of Temperance forming in 1870 and a state chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union established in 1883.

This culminated in a statewide prohibition election that went to the voters in 1887 - and was soundly defeated.

National prohibition came in 1918 (Texas ratified the amendment in 1919), but it was repealed nationally in 1933 and in Texas in 1935.

The issue returned to the default system of local option elections - letting voters decide for their counties or cities.

And that's where we are today; with a system that is appropriate to neither the time nor the place. I am not truly a member of any private club at that nearby chain restaurant/bar. As Groucho would say, I don't think I'd want to be a member of any club that would accept me as a member.

The private club system is a polite fiction for restaurant patrons. It's a needless and expensive level of bureaucracy for the restaurant owners.

There are real public policy debates to be had about alcohol and health and availability. But those debates have nothing to do with this proposed election.

Roy Maynard
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