RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A House committee is trying to undo a court-approved agreement between the state and a major outdoor advertising company that allows billboard liquor ads in Virginia for the first time.
Lawmakers learned only this week of a consent decree regarding Lamar Advertising Co., which sued in September challenging Virginia's virtual ban on billboard booze promotions.
The agreement Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's office negotiated on behalf of the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control forces the department to loosen its restrictions on outdoor ads for distilled spirits and other intoxicating drinks.
Gov. Bob McDonnell's office signed off on the consent decree.
Virginia had no choice, considering recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that similar restrictions on commercial speech violate the First Amendment, said Catherine C. Hill, a senior assistant attorney general involved in the case.
A lawsuit 10 years ago resulted in the elimination of a blanket ban on tobacco billboard ads. Subsequent bans on advertisements, such as the regulation at issue, have also been struck down as unconstitutional, she said.
An unhappy House General Laws committee took the measure up Thursday afternoon.
Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax County, criticized the agreement and new regulations that he said could leave beer and whiskey ads everywhere from roadside billboards to the exterior of neighborhood convenience stores.
"I think your restrictions are lame," Albo, an attorney and member of a subcommittee that amended an unrelated Senate bill Thursday. The bill would take the regulations out of the agency's hands and write tighter ones into state law.
The amendment, which would limit where liquor billboards can appear, is similar to a city ordinance in Baltimore, committee members said.
With adjournment scheduled for Feb. 26, prospects of the amended bill's passage are uncertain.
The bill now heads to the House floor for a vote early next week, but if the Senate doesn't concur with the amendment, it puts the bill into a conference committee where a handful of legislators will have to try to privately work out differences in the bill.
Del. Glenn Oder, R-Newport News, and other members of the panel said they were dismayed that they received no notice on the lawsuit or its resolution, even as McDonnell promoted his doomed proposal to put Virginia's state-owned liquor stores into the hands of private retailers.
"This is an enormous policy change, and the ramifications for this are going to be significant," Oder said.
Oder said he promoted McDonnell's liquor privatization plan and allayed constituents' concerns that liquor stores and advertising would proliferate as a result.
"Now I get to go and tell my citizens, no, we aren't going to privatize this year, but you're still going to get all of the negative impacts ... that you were afraid of," he said.
The changed character of the roadside becomes clear quickly when driving into a neighboring state, particularly Maryland, where there have been looser liquor advertising restrictions for years.
"Well, I don't want my state to become Maryland or New Jersey," he said.