The 80 Year War: Sunday alcohol sales in Indiana.

Personal opinion time again.

Prior to the short legislative session in 2014, the House Public Policy Committee had been helmed for too many years by Rep. Bill Davis, who was an unapologetic prohibitionist and made no bones about his preference for emasculating virtually any alcoholic beverage bills to come within whiffing distance of his hypersensitive nostrils. Since all of them had to pass through Davis's committee, there was predictable carnage.

Last year, not a lot happened in the committee on the adult libations front; then again, it was the first passage with a new man at the wheel, and a half-session.

In 2015, things have been crazy.

Look at the Onion map above. Picture Indiana small brewers, the wholesaler lobby, the groceries 'n' big boxes, and the package store group, all slugging away at their legislative agendas -- and in the process, pounding the stuffing out of each other. My theory is that after those many legislative sessions, in which Carrie Nation Davis kept reforms bottled up at committee level, suddenly there is a new sense of unfettered possibility ... and frantic maneuvering therein.

In the few days since the following was written, I'm told that the grocery chains and big boxes have turned against the package store proposal. It isn't hard to see why. One merely wonders about the extent of the collateral damage.

Deal brewing on Sunday Indiana alcohol sales, by Tony Cook (Indy Star via Louisville Courier-Journal)

Lawmakers have crafted a proposed compromise that would allow Sunday carryout alcohol sales in exchange for new restrictions on how drug and grocery stores can sell beer and liquor.

House Public Policy Chairman Tom Dermody plans to introduce the compromise measure on Wednesday.

RELATED | Bill loosens rules for combined Indiana alcohol sales

It would allow Sunday alcohol sales at any store with an alcohol permit, but it would create more stringent restrictions on retailers other than package liquor stores.

Those restrictions would require hard liquor to be sold from behind a counter and would require beer and wine to be located in a single aisle or a separate room. Clerks would also have to receive alcohol server training and permits.

RELATED | Fate uncertain for Sunday alcohol sale ban bill

Those new requirements are causing a sudden role reversal among grocery and liquor stores, which have been battling over the issue for years.

There's one fewer prohibitionist in the legislature today. Amen.

The Brewers of Indiana Guild has been informed that Representative Bill Davis, Chairman of the House Public Policy committee, has resigned his seat to become Executive Director of Indiana's Office of Community and Rural Affairs.

Why is this of significance? First, BIG's Lee Smith explains the legislative procedure:

All alcoholic beverage bills are automatically assigned to the House or Senate Public Policy committees, and must make it out of committee "alive" to continue through the legislative process. If a bill dies in committee, it is indeed dead and cannot not be debated or amended.

As chairman of the Public Policy Committee, Davis was in a position to squelch legislation to advance craft beer, and as a teetotaling prohibitionist of the old school, this is precisely what he did -- not always, but often enough. Given that Indiana's Republican legislators in the main have been rational about the craft beer business from the pragmatic standpoint of statewide "homegrown" economic development, Davis stood out like a sore Baptist with his self-professed hostility toward beverage alcohol as a valued component of a truly civilized society.

It's hard for me to imagine a successor s hostile, so fingers are crossed. It's morning, but somewhere, it's beer-thirty.

Bill Davis Resigns House Seat To Take Position With Gov. Administration

Indiana's ban on Sunday carry-out sales stands. See you at our local breweries and wineries this Sunday (hint: we can).

This decision means that for the time being, Sunday alcohol sales in Indiana look like this: On-premise licenses can serve on their own premises, and carry-out Sunday options remain restricted to small wineries and small breweries.

Indiana Sunday Alcohol Sales Bill Won't Get Vote, by Rick Howlett and the Associated Press (WFPL)S

The chairman of an Indiana House committee says the panel won't vote on a bill that would end Indiana's longtime ban on Sunday retail alcohol sales.

House Public Policy Chairman Bill Davis says he's decided against holding a committee vote on the measure. Davis' decision means Indiana residents who want to buy carry-out alcohol on Sundays will have to wait at least another year.

Indiana's lingering legislative blue law fetish dooms Sunday off-premise alcohol sales in Indiana ...

... except for small breweries and wineries.

It amazes me that our Indy-centric legislators prattle endlessly about economic development, and at the same time, never seem to understand that drinkers living on state borders travel to where they can spend their money on Sunday, namely surrounding states.

Also, Indiana's legislative contingent continues to endorse the doltish notion that it's better to go to a bar on Sunday to drink, and then drive home, as opposed to taking the alcohol home to drink.

And then there is Rep. Davis's comment to the effect that six days in a week is enough to buy alcoholic beverages. The same might be said for groceries and restaurants; if you plan ahead and buy supplies earlier in the week, do you really need to go anywhere at all on Sunday? Why permit any shop or store to open on Sunday, according to this reasoning? Is it 2012, or 1812?

Of course, Rep. Davis's blue-law-friendly internal rationalization is not how it works in real life -- and increasingly, real life is a place that few of these political dullards seem to inhabit, although Ideologyland is fairly bursting at the seams.

Sunday alcohol sales dead in Legislature, by Maureen Hayden (CNHI Statehouse Bureau)

INDIANAPOLIS — Depending on what happens in the Sunday-dry state of Connecticut, Indiana could soon become the last state in the nation with a Sunday ban on alcohol sales.

Legislative leaders in the Indiana General Assembly have decided against scheduling committee hearings on a bill that would have lifted the decades-old prohibition on the Sunday sale of alcohol for off-premise consumption.

Their decision effectively kills the bill.

“Surely we can buy enough alcohol in this state six days a week that we don’t need a seventh day to do it,” said state Rep. Bill Davis, the Republican chair of House Committee on Public Policy where the bill had been assigned.