MONTGOMERY — Members of the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board delayed voting on increasing its bailment fee on Thursday.
A bailment fee is paid by liquor producers to the ABC Board when their products are held in an ABC warehouse.
The ABC Board is currently constructing a new, larger central warehouse and office facility.
Alabama’s bailment fee is currently 72 cents per case. ABC Board administrator Curtis Stewart proposed increasing the fee over three years to $1 in 2026, $1.25 in 2027, and $1.50 in 2028.
Alabama is one of 17 remaining alcoholic beverage control states in the United States.
“The purpose of it is to help to defray the costs that we are going to incur for this larger new facility that we are going to be putting in place,” Stewart said at the meeting. “We’re in the process of building this warehouse, and our costs are starting now.”
John Knight, an ABC Board member, requested that the board postpone voting on the fee increase until their next meeting in October.
Knight said, “To me, this is just a tough time to increase a fee.”
“Do we need to do this immediately? Is this something that needs to be done now?” Knight said. “We’ve been in the process of building this warehouse for a long time, and we have been given numbers that said we can do this. I never heard that we were going to increase fees to build a warehouse.”
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