BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 593
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Date of Hearing: May 15, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Mike Gatto, Chair
AB 593 (Quirk) - As Amended: May 6, 2013
Policy Committee: Governmental
Organization Vote: 16 - 0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill makes various changes to the Alcoholic Beverage
Control Act. Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) to
evaluate its onsite license review process for restaurants to
implement a more expedited licensing process and submit a
report to the Legislature, on or before December 31, 2015,
relating to the review.
2)The ABC Act requires applicants for an on-sale or off-sale
license to publish a notice of the application in a newspaper
of general circulation. This bill would exempt an applicant
from this requirement if they are required to provide notice
of their application by mail to every resident and owner of
real property within 500-foot radius of the premises for which
the license is to be issued, or if ABC is required to notice
by mail a respective public agency, public official, or
governing body of a city or county.
3)Permits ABC to reject protests, except protests made by a
public agency, public official, or governing body of a city or
county, that it determines are invalid or unreasonable. The
bill would also require a protest submitted by a person other
than an employee of the department or a public officer to be
submitted by an individual, rather than by a petition signed
by multiple people.
4)States it is the intent of the Legislature to enact
legislation to require the Alcoholic Beverage Control Appeals
Board to issue its decisions within 120 days of a hearing.
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5)States it is the intent of the Legislature to enact
legislation to provide ABC with recruitment and retention
incentives.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)One-time costs for determining the list of unreasonable
protests and the required rule-making would likely be between
$50,000 and $120,000 (ABC Fund).
2)If ABC provides recruitment and retention incentives in
keeping with the stated intent of this legislation, on-going
costs would be approximately $50,000 per year (ABC Fund).
3)To the extent the adopted list of unreasonable protests
reduces the workload for ABC, there could be on-going savings
for the department.
4)Costs associated with the report requirements for ABC should
be negligible as that information is already contained in the
annual report ABC provides to the Legislature.
COMMENTS
Rationale . The author states the goal of this bill is to give
ABC more discretion to prioritize their efforts while allowing
applicants to participate in a process that is as efficient as
possible. Toward that end, the bill allows ABC to define what
constitutes an invalid or unreasonable protest to an ABC license
application. The author hopes that the list will include common
examples to be determined by the ABC. By providing clarity to
which type of protests will be considered valid, the author
seeks to reduce the workload of the ABC by giving them
discretion to not respond to numerous unreasonable protests.
In addition, the bill requires all public protests to be
submitted individually and limited to one signee. The author
maintains this will assist the ABC in meeting their obligation
to contact protesters directly, as opposed to those cases where
only a list of names on a petition is available.
Finally, the measure eliminates a requirement for applicants to
publish notification in regional print media in those cases
where individual notifications are already being mailed directly
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to area residents. This change is intended to help simplify the
application process for certain applicants who have multiple
notification requirements.
Analysis Prepared by : Julie Salley-Gray / APPR. / (916)
319-2081