Mr. Mayor is feigning ignorance. This started somewhere. The city knows about it otherwise there wouldn’t have been issued citations. This will not end well.
This is just simply about money.
Whether it was instigated by the City of Atlanta Law Department, politicians looking to increase local revenues, licensing attorneys looking to raise more revenue through fees or a restaurant group tired of dealing with people regularly bringing in wine is to me irrelevant.
This is what I was thinking, but wanted to see if someone posted it first. Clearly, this is most likely some restaurants that do not allow BYOB that have some pull with the higher ups.
Good news! The Mayor’s office officially announced no intention on requiring a special license for BYOB, and a councilman is introducing legislation to clarify the issue.
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/b-y-o-b-not-a-p-r-o-b/nfqSj/
Too bad that the Mayor couldn’t have simply (and calmly) said that he would see what is happening and offer clarity to the market, but I’ll take it.
Steve to Mr. Reed’s credit, he really did do that. He just didn’t make an early public statement on it. He said in his Twitter posts that he was ignorant of this entire situation but would look into it. It sounded dismissive but obviously was not. I am not his biggest fan but in this case he really did a great job. He is interested in promoting business not causing problems.
Don, you and I read different tweets.
But a good outcome is a good outcome, and I’ll take it.
Fair point. I thought a few of the early tweets were a bit grumpy, but hey, we’re all human. I think he and his team handled this quickly and fairly well overall.
I have no idea what kind of person this mayor is, but understand that this is the kind of issue that probably is more of an annoyance to a typical mayor than an issue they enjoy tackling. Still, as you say, a good outcome is a good outcome.
Bruce
I expect the Mayor and his office actually assessed the pros and cons of how to respond, and that he quite pragmatically and (coincidental or not) quite sensibly concluded that there is far more political good will to be gained from responding to allay the fears of restauranteurs and wine consumers than to be either dismissive or to defend a silly and arcane ordinance.
There’s still a lot of concern and nervousness out there though, and it isn’t confined to the City of Atlanta.