But during their mad dash to finish legislation before a midnight deadline, legislators side-stepped two opportunities to make broader changes to the industry, frustrating craft brewers and local officials who think the state’s byzantine alcohol laws need fundamental reform.

Massachusetts lawmakers on Sunday passed a bill that would fix several minor crises stemming from the state’s tangled alcohol licensing system, while slightly loosening blue laws that restrict when consumers can buy beer, wine, and spirits.

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“It’s a cobbled-together set of laws that’s been enacted over the past 83 years,” said Rob Martin, president of the Massachusetts Brewers Guild, referring to the end of Prohibition in 1933. “They result in continual problems, and then we get more cobbled-together fixes to those problems.”


The first substantial measure left on the cutting-room floor would have pressured Massachusetts brewers and beer wholesalers to end their long-running fight over when and how a brewery should be permitted to fire its distributor and sign up with a competitor.

Under the state’s current beer franchise law, a brewer can only switch to a new distributor if it can prove to state regulators that the wholesaler has met one of several conditions, such as disparaging the brewer’s beer or failing to “exercise best efforts” in selling it. Brewers want to weaken those restrictions so they have more flexibility; distributors say the current system incents them to sign up small breweries.

An amendment cut out of an economic development bill on Sunday would have directed the two sides to come up with a compromise by the end of the year. The language was drastically watered down from an earlier version that would have eliminated franchise restrictions.

Brewers blasted distributors for scuttling it.

“They spend a lot of time and money on lobbying and fund-raising,” Martin said. “It’s unfortunate that there was work done to stymie efforts just to get together and talk.”


The Beer Distributors of Massachusetts said in a statement that eliminating franchise protections would let large breweries “crush” them, and insisted they had met repeatedly with brewers on the issue.

“Any statements made that the Beer Distributors of Massachusetts are unwilling to discuss compromise and work to achieve a reasonable resolution are disingenuous,” said the group’s president, Bill Kelley.

A second proposed change to the state’s alcohol industry — giving municipalities, not state lawmakers, control over how many liquor license to issue in their communities — was also cut from the economic development bill Sunday, bitterly disappointing officials in Boston and other towns and cities.

Also left out of the bill were measures from Governor Charlie Baker that would have allowed consumers to fill up used growlers at breweries and permitted the sale of locally made beer and spirits at farmers markets.

Two alcohol reforms that did make it through to Baker’s desk were fixes to specific problems.

One will allow the Nashoba Valley Winery in Bolton and other so-called farmer wineries to serve alcohol in restaurants at their farms.

Controversy erupted earlier this year when state regulators told the company it couldn’t keep both its manufacturing licenses and its license for serving Nashoba beers, wines, and spirits at a restaurant on the farm grounds — even though the state had been renewing those licenses for years. Baker publicly supported Nashoba in the flap, and is likely to sign the fix.


Still, said John Connell, an attorney for Nashoba, “the fact that such a vibrant existing operation had to fight for its life to survive shows that there is a lot of room to loosen up the liquor license laws and their interpretation in general.”

Another measure approved by lawmakers Sunday would allow grocery stores that sell bottled take-home alcohol to also serve alcohol at in-store restaurants. The impetus for that change was the imminent opening at the Prudential Center of Eataly, a food emporium headlined by celebrity chef Mario Batali.

The language could also benefit grocery chains such as Wegmans and Whole Foods by allowing them to open small restaurants that serve alcohol within some of their stores.

Lawmakers also passed measures that would also prohibit the sale of powdered alcohol in Massachusetts — except for use as an ingredient in other products — and lift the state’s ban on selling alcohol on Memorial Day.

Debate over alcohol issues will resume this fall when Treasurer Deborah Goldberg, whose office oversees the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, plans to convene a task force to review Massachusetts’ alcohol laws.

Dan Adams can be reached at daniel.adams@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Dan_Adams86.