Mayor invites president to liquor hearing

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — The president of the Navajo Nation is keeping Mayor Bob Rosebrough in suspense.

Joe Shirley Jr. has yet to accept or decline an invitation from the mayor to speak at an upcoming public hearing in Albuquerque that could reshape the alcohol debate across both their communities.

The hearing is the public's chance to comment on proposed changes to New Mexico regulations that would make it easier for the state's Alcohol and Gaming Division to revoke a business's liquor license. Rosebrough extended the president an invitation to speak in favor of the proposals in a June 16 e-mail.

The invitation was New Mexico DWI Czar Rachael O'Connor's idea, said Rosebrough, who took the suggestion. Considering the impact alcohol abuse is having on Native Americans, the mayor said, Shirley's presence makes sense.

"He has both the prestige of his office, and he and his family have experienced the loss of a daughter in a DWI accident," he said.

Joe and Vikki Shirley lost their 29-year-old daughter, Tona Vee Shirley-Paymella, to a drunk driver in a head-on collision Thanksgiving Day, 2001. Vikki Shirley subsequently formed the Navajo Nation chapter of Mothers against Drunk Driving.

The new proposals come courtesy of a task force Gov. Bill Richardson convened last year to consider changing some of the regulations the Alcohol and Gaming Division drew up under the state's Liquor Control Act. The act sets the standards; the regulations describe how to meet them.

The regulations currently require at least five violations sales to a minor or intoxicated person within a 12-month period before the division director may revoke the offending establishment's liquor license. The task force has recommended lowering the bar to two sales to an intoxicated person, four to a minor, or a combination of four sales to either all within 12 months.

Rosebrough, who served on the task force, called the current standard for revoking a license "ridiculous." While 10,000 people go to jail for drunk driving each year, the state has revoked only two licenses within the past 10. The proposed changes, Rosebrough said, would address that double standard.

"It is unfair to crack down on individuals but let the bar owners break the law without consequence," he wrote Shirley in the June 16 e-mail.

The changes would also bring the division's regulations closer to the original intent of the Liquor Control Act, which requires only two sales to either a minor or an intoxicated person for revocation. Somewhere along the way, said O'Connor, who also served on the governor's task force, the act part of the state's statutes got "watered down."

"What we are trying to do is change the regulations so that they are more aligned with the statutes," she said.

They're also trying to align New Mexico with its neighbors, which, according to O'Connor, all impose stricter standards on their liquor license holders in one way or another. California, she offered as an example, requires three violations for revocation, but allows them to accumulate over three years instead of only one.

If adopted, the new rules could make things much harder for some local liquor dealers.

A 2005 report by the Gallup Police Department identified eight local liquor licensees with two or more citations for alleged violations of the Liquor Control Act within the first three months of the year alone. Only a couple of those licensees Silver Stallion Saloon owner Banny Padilla and El Dorado Restaurant and Lounge owner Jim Rashid have had more than one stick. Last February, Alcohol and Gaming Division Director Gary Tomada ordered Padilla to pay $8,000 in fines and shutter his business for nine days. In May, he ordered Rashid to pay $2,500 in fines and close for two.

Padilla, in turn, is suing city officials including Rosebrough for allegedly ordering police officers to target his business in hopes of stripping him of his liquor license and transferring it to a "whiter" establishment. Rosebrough has stated that his job as mayor was to set policy, not micromanage city staff.

Still, Padilla and other local liquor dealers accuse the city of overzealously pursuing violators. But with a new liquor agent on his way courtesy of the state charged with finding local violators full time, that pursuit is only likely to intensify.

"This will be a defining moment in Gov. Bill Richardson's legacy in New Mexico," Rosebrough said of the new proposals, a moment that sets a "clear choice" between public interest and private.

Technically it's the Alcohol and Gaming Division director's job to either accept or reject the task force's recommendations, according to O'Connor, not the governor's. She did not know when Tomada planned on making his decision.

The public hearing is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. on July 5 inside Albuquerque's National Hispanic Cultural Center, at 1601 Fourth Street, NW.

If Shirley shows up, it won't be the first time he and the mayor will have collaborated on liquor reform. They both marched on the State Capitol in 2004 to request more local control over Gallup liquor sales. As a border town of the Navajo Nation, an officially dry reservation, the city has had a strong impact on its neighbor.