ABRA Emergency Rulemaking Providing Additional Relief for Restaurants

The week of August 10, 2020, ABRA issued an emergency rulemaking providing additional relief for restaurants. The Board has greatly extended the time for payment, waived late fees and extended the date by which an operator must decide to pay to maintain the license.

Specifically, the emergency rulemaking does the following: 

• Suspends the late fee for a licensee's failure to timely remit the second or third year license fee or renewal license fee for certain license categories. This includes both operator ABC licenses and manager licenses. 
• Greatly extends the length of time for operators to pay to maintain a license. With these rulemakings, if payments due by July 31, 2020 are not made by 9/30/2020, cease and desist orders will be entered 10/21/2020 and licenses will be canceled for nonpayment on November 4, 2020. If a cease and desist order is entered and the license is cancelled for nonpayment, reinstatement may be requested until 5/3/2021 without the payment of late fees, as long as all fees are brought current. 
• The Board, also recognizing the difficulty in obtaining police clearances from other jurisdictions during the pandemic, adopted an alternate procedure for complying with police clearance requirements required for applications.