Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Excessive noise leads to tax cheat?

[Editor's Update] The way the news articles are written obviously are meant to entice readers. A city council member did email me to say that the Commissioner of Revenue had identified the owner for failure to pay taxes. So how it went from that, to being tied to lewd behavior in the news stories - well, draw your own conclusions. When I wrote this, I didn't intend to let the owner off the hook. He is accussed of failing to pay taxes, and they should prosecute as strongly as possible on that case.]

Front page of the region section in today's FLS is an article about a local bar owner arrested for ABC violations, and not paying taxes. It's repeated on NBC4, but with more biased headline "Bar Owner Faces Charges Following 'Girls Gone Wild' Event". But take a look at what prompted the investigation, and you start to get an uneasy feeling. The paper stated

"excessive noise" - its a bar
"public urinating" - patrons should be arrested
"cars peeling out" - again, the offending patron should be arrested.

I will point out that Virginia ABC laws do make it a liability to continue to serve someone who is intoxicated, so the owners don't get a fee pass. I just hope for their case that the raiding of the bar was based more on what they found after starting the investigation, not what the paper printed as past complaints.

Still feeling uneasy - last year Sunken Well was prevented from extending their hours to a more reasonable weekend closing time.

Moral of the story here I guess is to stick to the rules, and don't invite the "girls gone wild" crew to your bar, and make sure your business has the correct licenses.

WAIT a minute, you mean my tax dollars paid for city detectives to see the girls gone wild promotion, and purchase beer! Maybe I should consider a city job!

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