COVID CRAZY: ABC Commission Cancels Permits of 100+ Private Bar Owners Without Warning

RALEIGH – If something should be straight forward, simple, common sense, or easy to understand, just let government bureaucrats touch it; they’ll screw it up, and screw the People over, in no time.

The ABC Commission, without any warning whatsoever, canceled the permits of over 100 private bars for ‘unpaid fees.’ The bars weren’t really open on account of COVID restrictions, and the legislature passed legislation last year deferring payment of such fees for 60 days after the date bars were allowed to reopen.

Governor Roy Cooper graciously allowed private bars to operate at 30 percent of outdoor capacity on October 2, 2020. As the NCBOA points out, most private bars didn’t have outdoor capacity, and thus remain closed.

But the ABC Commission decided that October 2, 2020 started the clock for all of them. When the 60 day window expired, and without any warning that their permits were in jeopardy, they canceled the permits of the 100+ bars for failure to pay the fees.

Again, most of these bars were never really allowed to open based on the October 2, 2020 executive order.

Throughout the Pandemic Panic, bars seem to have been target #1 for Cooper and the shutdown-happy bureaucrats enforcing his executive edicts. Was there evidence of massive viral spread at bars? No; in fact, there was and is no evidence that bars were serving as major vectors of transmission.

Much like other businesses, but to a more sever degree, the COVID restrictions amounted to a bankruptcy sentence for these small-business owners. The ones that have survived until this point did so by sacrificing their savings, scrambling to pay past due bills, and hanging on for dear life.

And now, now that there’s ‘light at the end of the tunnel,’ their met with the government train that is the ABC Commission.

Earlier this month, the NCBOA filed suit against Governor Roy Cooper over the COVID closure decrees. You can read all about that here, and you can call your state representative here to let them know how you feel about government bureaucrats being used to cudgel business owners to death with arbitrary restrictions that CLEARLY have no effect on the spread of this virus.