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Thursday, March 09, 2006

Ind. Law - Wine shipping resolution not dead?

It's hard to say. The Louisville Courier Journal's Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has a story today headed "Wine bill may get new life: Fenced deer hunting measure all but dead" that covers a number of topics. Some quotes:

Members of the House and Senate continue to negotiate on the remaining bills alive in the General Assembly, trying to meet a midnight Tuesday deadline for action. * * *

Lawmakers also continued to work yesterday on a proposal to let wineries continue limited direct shipping of their products to customers.

Earlier this session, the wineries and wine wholesalers seemed close to a deal that would have allowed direct shipments, which the Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission has recently said violate state law.

Senate President Pro Tem Robert Garton, R-Columbus, killed the bill, though, when he learned lawsuits are pending on the issue. Garton has a longstanding policy that the Senate should not get involved in lawsuits.

Now, Rep. Matt Whetstone, R-Brownsburg, is trying to revive the proposal in a conference committee on an unrelated bill. He said he's hopeful that Garton will agree to go along with the new plan -- if the wineries and wholesalers can agree on a compromise. [emphasis added]

As proposed by Whetstone yesterday, the plan would allow wineries to ship up to 24 cases of wine to an individual in one year but no more than 3,000 cases to all customers.

But only wineries that sell less than 600,000 gallons of wine would be eligible. That could be a sticking point for some of the state's larger wineries, including Oliver Winery in Bloomington, because it hopes to expand and exceed that amount.

Whetstone said yesterday that it's essential the General Assembly act, rather than leaving the court to decide the issue. Lawmakers fear a judge might take an extreme position, such as allowing all direct shipments of alcohol or allowing none. "I think it's critical that lawmakers are the policy makers and not the courts," Whetstone said.

The story does not say what the "unrelated bill" in conference committee is, but I've heard it may be HB 1016, which has been described to the ILB as "a bill supported by all of Indiana Judges to make those on supervised release pay for the services granted to them while out on bond." The proposal is said to be very unpopular with the surety bail bond industry. As the subjects of wine shipping and court fees have little in common, presumably the intent would be to strip out the contents of HB 1016 and replace them with the compromise wine shipping language. Of course, this is entirely speculation at this point.

The question remains of whether Senator Garton, who killed the wine shipping compromise once already because of his rule that the Senate will not consider bills relating to pending litigation, would reverse course at this point. Or would the wine shippers withdraw their law suit? Presumably they would not do this unless they were assured a satisfactory compromise -- remembering that nothing is set in stone until the final gavel falls and the General Assembly adjourns sine die.

See this March 6th ILB entry that ends with a comprehensive history of the wine shipping issues.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 9, 2006 07:20 AM
Posted to Indiana Law