A Newton County business owner said that she has gathered about half of the approximately 2,200 signatures she needs to get a petition to allow alcohol sales in the county on the Nov. 4 general election ballot.
Denise King, owner of the Mount Judea General Store, said she has gathered about 1,100 signatures.
Newton County is one of 37 "dry" counties in Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. Michael Langley, director of the department's Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, said the county voted to prohibit alcohol sales in the 1940s.
To get King's proposal on the ballot, petitioners must gather signatures from 38 percent of registered voters in the county, Langley said.
According to the Newton County clerk's office, the county has 5,809 registered voters.
King said she isn't sure she'll meet her mid-June goal for collecting the needed signatures, but she's sure she'll hit the "hard deadline" of early August. She's going door-to-door most Saturdays, working from a list of registered voters.
"I have things organized by township, but I'm just going everywhere," King said.
Langley said that once a petitioner submits signatures to the county clerk's office, the clerk then must verify the names. If there are enough valid signatures, the clerk will put the issue on the ballot. After that, anyone who doubts the validity of the signatures can challenge them in circuit court.
After a county votes to allow alcohol sales, permits for retail beer and small-farm wine can be issued almost immediately, Langley said. When voters in Benton, Madison and Sharp counties approved alcohol sales for the first time in seven decades in November 2012, the beverage-control board approved nearly 60 permits across the three counties within the first two weeks of the laws going into effect, according to previous Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
The process of issuing permits for retail liquor to be consumed off-premises, however, typically takes about eight months, Langley said.
That process requires the board to publish notice of a drawing for available retail liquor licenses, followed by an application period for the drawing. The drawing determines the order in which applicants can apply for the available licenses.
The beverage-control board is allowed to issue one retail liquor license for off-premises consumption per 5,000 residents. The most recent census figures are used to determine the number of licenses, Langley said. With approximately 8,000 Newton County residents, that means the county would be eligible for one retail liquor store.
Langley said that initially, the available retail liquor licenses go fast, regardless of the size of the county.
"Anytime we do this, we issue the number of permits they qualify for, and they typically max out," Langley said.
King, who owns and operates Mount Judea's only gas station and convenience store, said she's interested in selling only beer and wine at her general store.
"You can buy beer and liquor 20 minutes from me," King said, noting that residents need only to cross the Newton-Boone county line to legally purchase alcohol. "Why send your tax dollars somewhere else?"
Arkansas has four alcohol taxes: a 1 percent beer excise tax, a 3 percent liquor tax, and two mixed-drink taxes of 4 percent and 10 percent. Revenue from the taxes is sent to the Finance and Administration Department and redistributed to all 75 counties based on population, regardless of whether a county is wet or dry.
Counties neighboring Newton County have benefited from retail alcohol sales.
In January, the Finance and Administration Department began tracking reported revenue through the North American Industry Classification System, the standard method used by most U.S. federal agencies for tracking statistical data developed in the mid-1990s.
According to the department, tax revenue from beer, wine and liquor stores in Boone, Carroll and Marion counties topped $6,800, $1,700 and $1,800, respectively. No data were available for sales in Madison County. Other counties neighboring Newton County, including Johnson, Pope and Searcy, still prohibit alcohol sales.
Metro on 05/07/2014