Baltimore’s liquor board brings city, state discord

Officials disagree over legislation to change who appoints commissioners

Who should choose Baltimore’s liquor board commissioners? City and state officials disagree.

For nearly a decade, two members of the three-commissioner board have been appointed by Baltimore’s mayor, with a third, plus an alternate, chosen by the City Council president. But a General Assembly bill under consideration this legislative session proposes to transfer that appointment power to Maryland’s governor, instead.

Senate Bill 22, sponsored by Sen. Antonio Hayes, a Democrat from Baltimore City, has a hearing scheduled Friday in the Senate Finance Committee.

Hayes says he wants to return to what was once the status quo, before the General Assembly granted appointment powers to the mayor and council president in 2016. “It’s simply taking it back to the way it had been before,” he said.

But Mayor Brandon Scott, a Democrat, pushed back on the proposal this week, saying the city should hold on to appointment power. “We don’t want it,” he said of Hayes’ bill. “We want [the board] to be appointed by us.”

The change eight years ago came amid a dispute with then-Gov. Larry Hogan over liquor board appointments.

The majority-Democratic Senate at the time had refused to confirm Hogan’s liquor board nominees, and the Republican governor said he would not submit any new names for lawmakers to consider. Without new appointments, the liquor board would be unable to perform many of its duties. Commissioners, who serve two-year terms, are responsible for deciding whether to approve beer, wine and liquor license applications and for reprimanding bars, restaurants and other liquor license-holders who break the law or the board’s regulations.

In response, then-Sen. Joan Carter Conway, a Baltimore City Democrat, suggested moving appointment authority for the liquor board from the governor’s office to the city. Baltimore officials and state lawmakers supported the change, saying a more locally driven appointment process would have the added benefit of increasing community confidence in the board.

After Conway’s legislation passed, one former commissioner sued, arguing the power shift was unconstitutional, but the case was dismissed in court. Since then, the mayor and council president have been in charge of liquor board appointments, though nominees still need to be confirmed by the Senate.

Hayes said he started thinking about shifting appointment power back to the governor after the Senate’s Finance Committee was assigned the responsibility of hearing testimony on alcohol-related legislation. Those bills previously went through the Senate’s Education, Health and Environmental Matters Committee but were reassigned when the committee rebranded last year.

“We in the legislature set all of the policy and laws to govern liquor licenses and other stuff,” Hayes said. “So, for me, it makes sense that if we’re setting the policies and regulations for law, it makes sense for us to have an influence on the board.”

The senator said he has not spoken to Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, about the proposed change.

Asked whether the governor would take a position on the bill, Moore’s press secretary Carter Elliott said the governor “looks forward to reviewing legislation that passes through the state legislature this session. When bills hit his desk he will thoroughly review them all to ensure that the MooreMiller administration is enacting legislation that is in the best interest of all Marylanders.”

Hayes’ bill will be presented Friday as part of “Liquor Day,” an hourslong hearing where the Finance committee will accept testimony on dozens of alcohol-related proposals from jurisdictions throughout the state.

In a meeting of the Baltimore City delegation earlier this month, Scott’s office asked legislators to consider a hybrid city-state appointment model, instead.

The mayor’s administration argued that it is in the city’s best interests to retain appointment power in order to prevent past issues with the liquor board and its oversight, according to testimony submitted by Nina Themelis, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Government Relations.

Themelis pointed out that there is no standard appointment process for liquor boards throughout the state, and noted that eight of Maryland’s 10 most populous jurisdictions have a liquor board appointed by the local executive or council.