Indiana takes step toward Sunday alcohol sales

A panel working to revise Indiana’s alcohol laws voted Tuesday to recommend allowing carryout alcohol sales on Sunday.

The measure would allow stores that currently sell alcohol — including grocery, convenience and liquor stores — to sell alcohol from noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday.

The recommendation is an important win for supporters of Sunday alcohol sales, but the measure still faces a number of hurdles before it can become law. It also sets up a showdown over another issue: cold beer.

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The panel, set up in the wake of a controversy over the sale of cold beer at two Rickers convenience stores, delayed a decision on whether to recommend expanding cold beer sales to grocery and convenience stores, ending the virtual monopoly liquor stores currently have on that product.

Members of the Alcohol Code Revision Commission said the issue was too complex to address during Tuesday's meeting.

The Sunday sales recommendation comes just days after the state's liquor store association announced an unlikely alliance with big box retailers. Under the deal, both groups will support Sunday sales while opposing expanded cold beer sales.

Left out of the deal was the convenience store industry, whose priority is cold beer sales.

It's the latest turn in a long-running effort to update the state's Prohibition-era alcohol laws, which critics and lawmakers alike have described as antiquated. Indiana is the only state that regulates alcohol based on temperature and is one of nine states that restrict or prohibit Sunday alcohol sales.

In recent years, the small but powerful liquor store industry has beat back any changes, preferring the status quo for financial reasons. Those efforts were recently detailed in an IndyStar series about the industry's influence at the Statehouse.

But public opinion has shifted over the years, with polls now showing a strong majority of Hoosiers favor Sunday and expanded cold beer sales. Facing increased pressure, liquor stores are now supporting Sunday sales in an effort to preserve their cold beer turf.

Lawmakers said Tuesday that the alliance increases the odds of the Sunday sales ban being lifted next year. But they said it's too early to say what will happen with cold beer.

"They have a lot of influence. They’ve been able to keep us from considering a Sunday sales law forever," Sen. Phil Boots, a Crawfordsville Republican who operates several convenience stores, said of the liquor store industry. "So whatever they want is probably what is going to happen."

Beverly Gard, a former lawmaker and the panel's chairwoman, said the liquor and big box store announcement about their new alliance last week almost made it sound as if the Sunday sales and cold beer issues had been settled.

"It has bothered me the way the issue was framed," she said. "It sounds like these two associations have come to a compromise so that’s going to be the new policy for the state. That’s really jumping the gun."

Still, she acknowledged the clout of the liquor store industry at the Statehouse, even as she downplayed their influence on her panel, which includes people other than lawmakers.

"It’s significant," she said. "I don’t think so much with this group, but obviously they’ve had their way for a long time."

The cold beer debate was reignited earlier this year when Rickers used a restaurant license to begin selling cold beer for takeout at two gas stations in Central Indiana. Liquor stores cried foul and lawmakers worked quickly to close the loophole.

Owner Jay Ricker, who has criticized the liquor store-big box deal as a "backroom deal," said Tuesday that he didn't think convenience stores had enough votes on the panel to advance a cold beer recommendation.

But that could change, Gard said, if expanded cold beer sales are coupled with new regulations such as requiring licensed clerks age 21 or older, or with new taxes or licensing fees that could be used to hire additional excise police officers.

"It's sort of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't have matching pieces," she said.

The commission is scheduled to meet two more times in December. Lawmakers are expected to take up the panel's recommendations when the General Assembly convenes in January.

IndyStar reporter Robert King contributed to this story.

Call IndyStar reporter Tony Cook at (317) 444-6081. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.