The West Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Administration announced recently it would honor the intent of the Legislature’s 2024 update to the private outdoor designated area law instead of enforcing the letter of the law, as it had previously said it would. That’s good, but it’s not enough.
A PODA is designed to allow individuals to purchase alcoholic drinks, in clearly marked cups, in one location and carry them to other locations within a designated area. The original PODA law limited participating businesses to those that could sell liquor, which excluded ones that only sold beer or wine. So stakeholders approached the Legislature and asked them to fix it so breweries and other beer-only sellers could also be included in PODA.
That was supposed to be fixed during the 2024 legislative session, and lawmakers, for their part, thought they had fixed it. But in despite the language that expanded coverage to non-liquor-licensed businesses, there was also a piece of language that made the law subject to a specific piece of West Virginia state code. And that piece of state code only applies to businesses with liquor licenses.
So for all its good intent, the Legislature didn’t actually fix the problem, and the ABCA said it would enforce the PODA law in accordance to state code. We can’t blame ABCA for choosing to follow the letter of the law, and we previously called for the PODA law to be revised during the May special session Gov. Justice is expected to call.
We are glad that ABCA has since decided to honor the law’s intent. That will allow for Morgantown’s planned PODA downtown to go into effect later this month and include the handful of businesses that would have unfairly been left out otherwise.
However, it is not enough. The Legislature must fix the PODA law’s language so it accurately reflects legislators’ intent. Right now, we are lucky that ABCA leadership is willing to embrace the spirit of the law, but that could change in the future, and we could once again face a bureau that insists on following the letter of the law. As such, legislators should not make this stroke of good fortune an excuse to delay action on PODA. It must be fixed, preferably sooner rather than later.
