Always taste test the sausage

Last night, East Baton Rouge Parish took a step forward in pulling itself out of the puritan days of the early 20th Century by greatly diminishing the impact of our blue laws on personal freedoms by a vote of 8-3. Sure, we’re just talking about knocking back beers on a Sunday here, but the debate really speaks to the larger question of why and when government should regulate the choices of individuals and businesses. My hat goes off to all of those who were involved in getting this proposal passed, with particular emphasis on Councilwoman Alison Gary for her leadership in seeing the proposal through to the end.

There’s a popular phrase about lawmaking that is often misattributed to 19th Century German Chancellor Otto von Bismark. It goes something like this: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” The gist of it is that people tend to like the results of sausage/law making more so than the process of creating the sausage/law and thus tend to pay less attention to the latter. Out of sight, out of mind. I hope that makes sense… anyway the problem with this approach (and to continue the metaphor) is that ingredients are sometimes accidentally left out or added and you don’t realize it until you bite into your sausage Po-Boy, with disastrous results.

This brings us to the case in point: the blue law repeal the Metro Council approved last night. The approved proposal differs in some ways from the original proposal. Under the original proposal, Sunday was to be treated as any other day with respect to serving alcohol, with any permit holder being allowed to serve alcohol from 6AM to 2AM the following day. After some compromise, this was removed and replaced with verbiage that allows on-premise permit holders (bars and restaurants, basically) to serve alcohol from 11AM to Midnight on Sundays.

So what’s the problem? Before the Council amended it last night, the ordinance had a carve-out that allowed permit holders to open and stay open until 2AM the following day if New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday (so you could, you know, party). Since the original proposal made Sunday like any other day, that verbiage was no longer necessary and was removed. Unfortunately, after all of the compromises and edits were made, the New Year’s Eve language was never added back. As a result, if New Year’s Eve falls on a Sunday under our new less blue law, bars and restaurants would have to close as soon as the ball drops at the stroke of midnight. No New Year’s kiss, no champagne, no Auld Lang Syne. No bueno.

I imagine this was simply an oversight and likely resulted from the amending and compromising process and will be subsequently fixed. It would help if more people in the public actively take a look at these proposals before a vote is taken. The Council could facilitate this by posting these proposals along with the agenda online rather than requiring citizens to proactively request them. After all, as much as we don’t want to, we probably should have an idea of what’s in the sausage.