ON THE AVENUES: The fruitless search for adults in county government.

ON THE AVENUES:  The fruitless search for adults in county government.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor. 

The New Albanian Brewing Company’s (NABC) is in a bit of a tiff with the Floyd County Health Department (FCHD). The spat was prompted by the FCHD, and it’s all about Indiana law, and whether the law considers beer to be food.

That’s entirely it, so don’t be confused by a government agency’s lowball tactics.

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For reasons that remain obscure, on June 14, 2013, the FCHD elected to assert a share of control over beer pouring events, which are already subject to Alcohol & Tobacco Commission (ATC) guidelines. Without advance notice, the FCHD demanded that NABC procure a temporary food serving permit just to pour draft beer. Subsequent explanations were slow in coming from the FCHD, and when they finally did, the word “Orwellian” best describes their tenor.

The FCHD’s move to control beer pouring events constitutes an unprecedented and frankly bizarre break with more than seven decades of regulatory history in Indiana, during which all licensing, control and enforcement of alcoholic beverages comes solely from the ATC. If the FCHD decision stands, Floyd County would become the only county out of 92 in Indiana where the health department is allowed such an egregious expansion of its powers.

NABC has objected strongly to this outrageous usurpation, and while complying under written protest with the unprecedented permit demand, we have followed the appeal process as the rules mandate. We also filed a request with the Indiana Public Access counselor, compelling the FCHD to yield citation documents that severely undercut the department’s own wobbly case.

We then asked for an appeal before the health department board, which issued a contradictory ruling ripe for further judicial review – and rest assured, there’ll be further judicial review.

Perhaps owing to the transparent weakness of the FCHD’s legal justification, or more likely, because NABC has been especially effective at exposing the department’s charades via on-line and social media platforms, this story recent has taken an even uglier twist.

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On July 24, the day before NABC’s health board appeal, an alert Bank Street Brewhouse employee saw a health department truck come to an illegal stop on Bank Street, just in front of Bank Street Brewhouse. The passenger got out and took a photo, then got back inside, and the truck drove away. On or about July 29, with the hearing concluded, and as we awaited the formal written decision, the photo appeared on the health department’s web site, where it remains.

Ladies and gentlemen, NABC’s current “discussion” with the Floyd County Health Department, which began on June 14 as described above, centers on one topic and one topic alone: Whether the department has any statutory basis to force alcoholic beverage vendors to acquire temporary permits. It is a question of whether alcoholic beverages are food, and subject to regulation as food, in a temporary setting alone.

It has nothing whatever to do with NABC’s two restaurants, both of which are licensed yearly by the FCHD, employ registered food handlers as managers, and are inspected on a regular basis according to health department procedures with which we have had little or no issue in the past, and ones that we’ve never been in violation of, in any apart from minor and immediately correctable ways.

The health department’s photo implies otherwise, and as such, it’s reprehensible. As you think about this, bear in mind that the FCHD is a government agency.

Are you in favor of a government agency using tax dollars for harassment of this fashion?

Are you in favor of Floyd County government taking a hands off approach with respect to such an abuse? Bear in mind that the FCHD answers to the three county commissioners, and while Chuck Freiberger attended the appeals hearing and has expressed a lively interest in this case, Mark Seabrook and Stephen Bush are entirely (and joyfully) AWOL.

Are you in favor of institutional hubris so pervasive that the FCHD denounces protests against its power grab as “juvenile,” while at the same time eagerly deploying a photographic smear that pole vaults past “juvenile,” landing instead in the territory of retributory and intimidating?

If you replied “no” to these three questions, I suggest you get involved. Let the principles know what you think. Is this really the style of county government we need?

Write the commissioners here: commissioners@floydcounty.in.gov

Write the FCHD’s Dr. Tom Harris here: tharris@floydcounty.in.gov

Let me know what they say in reply -- if they do.