Panelist calls Texas liquor regulation 'corrupt' system

[Gman]

AUSTIN — A citizen member of the state's Sunset Advisory Commission wants the Legislature to dismantle what he calls the "corrupt system" of alcoholic beverage regulation that he says protects wholesale distributors.

Austin attorney Howard Wolf, in a scathing position paper, criticized the relationships among lawmakers, wholesale distributors and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

The paper, delivered Thursday to the Sunset Commission, comes less than two weeks after state reports showed groups representing wholesale liquor distributors donated more than $1 million to the campaigns of at least 150 state officials, including most legislators and Republican Gov. Rick Perry.
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"Poised like lions on a patch of high ground in the Serengeti, occasionally swishing their tails so their presence would be noted, the lions of the lobby watched at hearings to ensure that no Republican elephant or Democratic mule would dare stray from the prescribed path," Wolf wrote of the Sunset Commission hearings in December.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4540408.html

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<Shaking my head as a Texan>