On a 41-27 vote, the House approved a bill that would expand tastings to craft distilleries and expand restaurant alcohol licenses that meet local ordinances to include not only beer and wine but also spirits with a 10 p.m. cutoff.<\/p>\n
The bill also would legalize and regulate alcohol deliveries accompanied by food. It now moves to the Senate for consideration.<\/p>\n
Amid concerns about economic stagnation, legislators are wrestling with how to modernize a closely guarded monopoly on licenses for packaged liquor sales that routinely sell for more than $300,000 and serve as family inheritances.<\/p>\n
In concessions to vested interests, the proposed legislation offers a $200,000 tax deduction over a four-year period to liquor license holders and waives future annual license fees in perpetuity for license holders and immediate relatives who may inherit licenses.<\/p>\n
Lost state income from the tax deduction would be offset by a new 2% excise tax on individual drink sales.<\/p>\n
Democratic state Rep. Moe Maestas, the bill\u2019s lead sponsor, said the changes are designed to revive small-town economic opportunities and that the value of liquor store licenses will endure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have killed similar bills for 39 years,\u201d Maestas said. \u201cWe have to modernize.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
a 41-27 vote, the House approved a bill that would expand tastings to craft distilleries and expand restaurant alcohol licenses that meet local ordinances to include not only beer and wine but also spirits with a 10 p.m. cutoff. The bill also would legalize and regulate alcohol deliveries accompanied by food. It now moves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[924,815,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-alcohol","tag-associated-press-new-mexico","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48352"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}