{"id":4963,"date":"2011-03-19T02:20:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-19T07:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/?p=4963"},"modified":"2011-03-21T02:05:57","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T07:05:57","slug":"legal-opinion-could-reopen-festival-beer-concession-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2011\/03\/19\/legal-opinion-could-reopen-festival-beer-concession-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal opinion could reopen beer issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Van Wert County Regional Airport Authority board members discuss airport business during their March meeting. Will the group reconsider allowing beer sales at the airport? (Dave Mosier\/Van Wert independent)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thought you\u2019d seen the last act of the beer concession epic? Not even. Van Wert Law Director Greg Unterbrink likely forced an encore to the issue with a legal opinion he issued on Friday stating that Ohio liquor license laws essentially make the city\u2019s 34-year-old open container law invalid for events like the local Wheels-N-Wings festival.<\/p>\n

Unterbrink, who further researched the issue after prompting by City Auditor Martha Balyeat and Second Ward Councilman Kirby Kelly, said Ordinance 5441-77, adopted by City Council on August 22, 1977, is \u201cinvalid and unenforceable\u201d when people lawfully purchase beer for consumption on the premises of a festival like Wheels-N-Wings, as long as a valid state liquor license is obtained.<\/p>\n

Noting that Ohio Revised Code Section 4301.62, adopted September 10, 2010, provides an exception to open container laws, Unterbrink added that, as in most cases, state law supersedes local laws when there is a conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen municipal home rule powers come into conflict with state statutes, and there is a conflict in the exercise of police powers, the state exercise prevails and the local exercise is invalid,\u201d Unterbrink wrote in Friday\u2019s decision, citing case law to bolster his opinion (<\/a>click here<\/a><\/strong> to read the entire opinion).<\/p>\n

In essence, the decision makes it unnecessary for City Council to have to approve an exception to its open container ordinance, since holding a valid liquor license for the Wheels-N-Wings event would be sufficient to provide an exception to the local open container ordinance while the license is in effect.<\/p>\n

A Class F liquor license obtained by non-profit organizations to sell beer at events such as the Wheels-N-Wings festival would be sufficient to supersede the local ordinance.<\/p>\n

What that means for the Wheels-N-Wings Committee isn\u2019t certain, at this point.<\/p>\n

Larry Lee, executive director of the Van Wert Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and a member of the committee, said Friday that the committee would be meeting Monday to decide what can be done at this point to salvage having the planned beer concession at the Van Wert County Regional Airport \u2013 the site of all the other festival-related events.<\/p>\n

Some Airport Authority board members, including County Commissioner Clair Dudgeon, are also planning to attend the committee meeting, but how many others will attend is not known at this time.<\/p>\n

Even though City Council\u2019s permission is apparently no longer needed to sell beer on public property during the festival, it is still essential for Wheels-N-Wings committee to obtain permission from the Airport Authority board to hold the beer concession at the airport.<\/p>\n

With all the confusion over the issue, it is unclear at this point whether that permission would be forthcoming, even with Unterbrink\u2019s latest legal opinion, since the board previously voted 4-2 against selling beer at the airport during the festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/independent editor Thought you\u2019d seen the last act of the beer concession epic? Not even. Van Wert Law Director Greg Unterbrink likely forced an encore to the issue with a legal opinion he issued on Friday stating that Ohio liquor license laws essentially make the city\u2019s 34-year-old open container law invalid for events like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 03:30:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}