Liquor Laws

An organization promoting sadism, masochism and other sexual fetishes has canceled plans for a three-day convention in Ocean City, bowing to church, community and business groups worried about the resort's family image. Members of Black Rose decided to scrap the Nov. 14-16 convention at the Princess Royale hotel when they learned their activities might violate local liquor laws, city officials said. The group had planned, among other events, demonstrations of safe bondage techniques. City Solicitor Guy R. Ayres III noted that nudity, whipping and other activity associated with S&M are not legal in establishments with liquor licenses in Ocean City.

When a national health care company considered setting up a customer service call center with 200 employees this year near Baltimore-Washington International Airport, the deal-breaker wasn't jet noise or traffic or a pricey lease. It was restaurants - the lack of them. "They told me they needed restaurants to feed three different shifts," said William A. Badger Jr., president and chief economic officer of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. "They asked me, `Where do they go to just get lunch or breakfast?

You may believe you are a responsible citizen with a healthy appreciation of wine, a beverage of health and pleasure. But Maryland's liquor laws are based upon the presumption that you are an irresponsible drunk who would end up in the gutter if price competition were to make alcoholic beverages too affordable. That's not exactly the way Charles W. Ehart, administrator of the Maryland Comptroller's Office's alcohol-tax unit, put it when he explained the state's wine-distribution system to me last week.

Citing what it called "a cavalier attitude toward their responsibilities," Howard County's Alcoholic Beverage Hearing Board has cracked down hard on owners of Morgan Inn, a western Howard County tavern where a police detective found two underage females drinking in April. In addition, the board fined owners of a liquor store in Wilde Lake Village Center, Eric and Naomi Kaufman, $750 because an employee served an underage patron July 6. In the Morgan Inn case, the board imposed $1,500 in fines and ordered a two-day liquor license suspension, likely next month, on 11-year owners Mal Ja Baek, William L. Walk Jr. and Sun Young Jung.

The city's experiment of letting the China Room remain open until 4 a.m. is in jeopardy after liquor inspectors cited it for violating a state law barring nightclubs from operating past 2 a.m. unless patrons are seated, being served food. Inspectors cited the China Room, in Uncle Lee's Szechuan Restaurant at South and East Lombard streets, Friday after finding tables pushed against the wall and seeing patrons dancing. There was no evidence of food being prepared, according to liquor board documents.

The owner of a Jessup restaurant and liquor store who asked Howard County police for help in preventing trouble on his parking lot at night got more than he bargained for, a week's suspension of his liquor license starting tomorrow and a $300 fine for selling alcohol to a man officers said was drunk. Stanley J. Nasiatka, licensee of Three Nines Tavern in the 7700 block Washington Blvd., had asked for help in discouraging people from drinking on his parking lot and wanted more frequent police patrols, Detective Martin Johnson told the county liquor board June 28. The board's decision was dated Aug. 8. Nasiatka is so intent on enforcing county liquor laws that he hired a "mystery shopper" to test his workers' ability to ferret out underage customers and paid his employees for their time if they must testify before the board.

Two Howard County restaurants - one in Ellicott City and the other in Columbia - were fined for breaking county drinking laws. Steve Heintzelman, operator of Sonoma's Pub in Owen Brown Village Center, was ordered to pay $275 Wednesday for allowing a 20-year-old woman to be served alcoholic beverages Nov. 14. Heintzelman told the county's Alcoholic Beverage Hearing Board that the bartender who sold the alcohol without asking for identification no longer...

Closing liquor stores could cut crime, improve the city ... I couldn't agree more with Councilman Norman A. Handy ("Cut alcohol, control crime," OpinionCommentary, May 16). It's time we took a look at the availability of alcohol and the consequences of its abuse, especially among the poor. Alcohol is an addictive, depressant drug that causes a lot of problems in addition to crime. Alcohol addiction causes lost jobs and broken marriages. Some people who drink regularly become more aggressive; others become lethargic and hopeless.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening signed into law yesterday a bill allowing restaurateurs in Anne Arundel County two liquor licenses, clearing the way for the expansion of chain restaurants throughout the county. The bill was one of several local measures passed in the recent General Assembly session and signed by the governor yesterday, including one that raises the state's attorney's salary and another that raises fines for violating county liquor laws to $100 from $25. The multiple liquor license law, spearheaded by Dels.

Dividing almost entirely on party lines, Anne Arundel County's House delegation has voted to increase fees on one-day liquor licenses by as much as 150 percent -- a "tax" that would fall on newlyweds, families and nonprofit organizations, an opponent bitterly contends. So miffed was Del. James E. Rzepkowski that the 32nd District Republican fired off a fax to news organizations late Friday afternoon listing the delegation's votes on the fee increase -- approved 7-6 as an amendment to a bill making another change in Anne Arundel's liquor laws.