
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 16, 1991                   TAG: 9102180327
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LAKE LIQUOR

THE GENERAL Assembly this year got right what it last year came perilously close to mucking up. This year, the legislature found a reasonable way for liquor to be sold by the drink in the Smith Mountain Lake part of an otherwise resistant Franklin County.

Calling the rest of Franklin "dry" would, of course, be naively inaccurate. Not for nothing does Franklin have a heritage of extraordinarily voluminous sugar sales. Still, so to speak, the idea of selling liquor by the drink rather than the Mason jar was rejected by county voters in 1988. And to be fair, many of those who voted against it no doubt dislike moonshining as well as restaurant cocktails.

Clearly, however, there is more than one Franklin County. In the lake's growing resort and retirement communities, filled with non-natives, sentiment seems in favor of allowing restaurants to sell cocktails. Away from the lake, in the county's more rural parts, sentiment runs in the other direction.

A 1990 bill would have settled the difficulty, but in a fashion hardly conducive to good will and confidence in government. Sponsored by a Northern Virginia lawmaker whose constituents included people with vacation homes at the lake, the measure by legislative fiat would have imposed liquor by the drink within three miles of the lake.

The bill passed the House, but failed by one vote to get out of Senate committee.

The 1991 solution, sponsored by Roanoke Del. Clifton Woodrum and passed in both houses, does far better. No longer would referendums to decide the cocktail question have be countywide. Under the change, voters in each magisterial district of a county could decide for themselves. In Franklin, for example, voters in one or both of the districts near the lake could approve liquor by the drink, while it could remain illegal in the rest of the county.

One difference from last year's proposal is that Woodrum's bill is not special legislation for a single locality. By applying statewide, and not just to Franklin County, it forestalls the need to go through the entire process again every time a similar situation pops up elsewhere in Virginia.

Another difference is that cocktails could be sold only if the practice wins voter approval. The size of the relevant electorate is made smaller, to reflect social and economic reality. But the Virginia principle remains intact: Whether in any particular place liquor can be sold by the drink is best decided by the people who live there.

by CNB