New Hampshire
New Hampshire’s New Booze Law Will Hamstring the State’s Brewpubs
The rationale behind New Hampshire’s new brewpub regulation is more headache-inducing than the beer.
On Friday, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) signed House Bill 242 into law. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. John Hunt (R–Rindge), will take effect in August and limits brewpubs in the state to self-distributing their beer to only one additional restaurant or business outside their premises. The bill is a follow-up to H.B. 1380, also sponsored by Hunt in 2024, which limited the amount of beer or cider a brewpub could sell to 2,500 barrels a year and permitted licensed brewpub owners to obtain licenses to sell their product on their premises in bars and at off-premise locations like grocery stores, so long as they didn’t have a manufacturing license.
If the law sounds like it will keep brewpubs small, that’s because it’s intended to do so. “This is what we call a very inside baseball bill,” Hunt told the New Hampshire Bulletin.
Hunt said that H.B. 242 was designed to preserve the state’s current regulatory system, describing New Hampshire as a “three-tier state,” where businesses operate as either beverage manufacturers, distributors, or retailers. By restricting brewpubs from becoming a one-stop shop that acts as a “bottler…distributor” and “retailer,” Hunt said the bill is intended to safeguard the “monopoly” held by beer distributors in the middle tier of this system.”Frankly, I think the relationship between the distributors and the licensees (retailers) is pretty sacred, and it works well, and there’s no reason to upset them.”
The bill was supported by the state’s restaurant and lodging trade group. “You have to understand, in order for one of these brewpubs to make enough beer to self distribute to more than one additional location, they would have to make an enormous amount of beer…and frankly, most of them didn’t think they could make enough beer to even distribute to another location,” Mike Somers, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association, told the New Hampshire Bulletin. “Most of the folks in the industry that I’ve talked to didn’t really feel that the restriction was much of a restriction, because they could now own multiple brewpubs and restaurants.”
Rather than having the freedom to ramp up production and distribution, Somers contends that brewpub owners would rather start new brands and businesses from scratch.
This wasn’t the only booze-related bill that passed the governor’s desk: Ayotte also signed H.B. 467 and let H.B. 81 become law without her signature. H.B. 467 allows municipalities to create designated “social districts” where people can legally consume alcohol outdoors. These areas must be clearly marked with signs indicating the permitted times and boundaries, and all alcohol must be purchased from businesses within the district. Separately, H.B. 81 permits restaurant patrons to bring their drinks with them to the restroom.
While both laws ease some restrictions on consumer alcohol use, they stop short of meaningfully reducing the state’s overall control of alcoholic beverages. And now, New Hampshire’s brewpubs will face more hurdles to scaling up the production and distribution of their beer.
In keeping with that spirit, the state would be better served by promoting policies that encourage innovation, rather than anticompetitive laws like H.B. 242 that restrict consumer choice and unfairly penalize brewpubs for their market success.
The post New Hampshire’s New Booze Law Will Hamstring the State’s Brewpubs appeared first on Reason.com.
New Hampshire
More businesses would be exempt from a key state tax under a proposal heading to Ayotte’s desk
The New Hampshire House and Senate stopped shy of cutting a major state business tax outright Thursday, but did pass a plan to lift the tax’s filing threshold, and spend $2.5 million to lift Medicaid provider rates at state nursing homes.
“What you have before you is a bill that will protect our nursing homes, and protect our small businesses,” said Republican Sen. Tim Lang of Sanbornton.
Under the bill, the threshold on the state business and enterprise tax would be lifted from $297,000 to $400,000, a move GOP leaders expect will exempt about 4,000 small businesses from having to pay the tax.
The bill’s inclusion of money to boost provider rates for nursing homes was a policy the Senate prioritized, and its inclusion in the bill earned the plan some Democratic support. But that evaporated when Republicans in the House pushed to add a trigger to the bill to automatically reduce the rate of the tax when collections from the levy far exceeded estimates.
“The rate cuts are reckless and irresponsible and would potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars in the future,” said Sen. Cindy Rosenwald of Nashua.
Under the plan, the tax rate, which now stands at 0.55%, would automatically drop by .005% anytime collections on the tax surpassed estimates by $100 million until the rate of the levy reached 0.25%, equivalent to the rate when the tax was created in 1993. Any reduction would also require the state’s Rainy Day Fund to hold a strong balance.
Cutting business taxes has been a focus for GOP leaders in Concord for years, and they’ve dropped the rate of the Business Enterprise Tax four times since 2016.
Lebanon and Israel provisionally agreed in Washington to a new ceasefire Wednesday. But hours later Israel continued attacks and the militant group Hezbollah said it rejected any ceasefire that did not start with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory.
The fighting appeared to jettison immediate prospects of a wider ceasefire between the United States and Iran. Iran has said it will not agree to a ceasefire with the U.S. and Israel unless there is one in Lebanon.
UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping operation for Lebanon, announced Thursday that one of its peacekeepers had been killed and others wounded when mortars hit their position near Marjayoun in southeastern Lebanon.
A U.N. source said the mortars appeared to have come from Hezbollah. The attack came as Israel and Lebanon were negotiating a ceasefire in Washington. The person asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. Hezbollah has been targeting Israeli army installations in the vicinity.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Esmail Qaani was quoted by Iranian state media Thursday saying that Israel must withdraw to pre-war positions as the first step in a ceasefire with Lebanon. Before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Israel held five positions across the border in Lebanon. It now occupies large parts of the south of the country.
The U.S. does not speak directly to Hezbollah, which it classifies as a terrorist organization. Lebanon’s negotiations in Washington were carried out without direct inclusion of the Iran-backed group.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Thursday that the ceasefire would come into force within 24 hours of all concerned parties approving it, especially Hezbollah.
A Hezbollah official told NPR that Hezbollah officially informed the Lebanese president that it would not accept any ceasefire that did not begin with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon.
The official asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
Israeli defense minister Israel Katz said Israel was demanding the creation of what it called a de-militarized zone within Lebanon while being able to continue attacks against Iran-backed Hezbollah. He said Israel would not be withdrawing from the south.
Jawad Rizkallah contributed reporting from Beirut.
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