A year after Maryland lawmakers shepherded a beer industry compromise intended to help new breweries expand, the debate is beginning anew this week — and is looking as if it might devolve into a barroom brawl.
The first punches in the beer-fueled legislative fight could come in a House of Delegates committee room on Friday.
“There will be fireworks,” said Kevin Atticks, executive director of the Brewers Association of Maryland.
Comptroller Peter Franchot has rallied the state’s microbreweries and their customers to fight the regulations established last year that they say restrict craft brewers from growing. As the enforcer of state alcohol laws, Franchot is pitching a new set of even more sweeping reforms to remove limits set last year on beer production, taproom sales and distribution to bars and liquor stores.
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