The Boston Globe - 13.09.2019

A8 Editorial The Boston Globe FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2019

D

oyle’s, the beloved Jamaica Plain bar that’s

been in business since 1882, survived

Prohibition; survived the once-

controversial arrival of women as patrons;

survived busloads of tourists from the Sam

Adams brewery.

What ultimately killed it — or, more precisely, creat-

ed an economic incentive for the owner to kill it himself

— was the city’s archaic liquor licensing system.

As the Globe reported Tuesday, Doyle’s will sell its li-

cense to Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse, which

paid $455,000 for the precious piece of paper that al-

lows it to serve a full bar seven days a week at a new res-

taurant planned for the Seaport. In a month or two, the

gathering spot for generations of neighborhood resi-

dents and Boston politicos will shut its doors forever.

It joins the migration of other liquor licenses from

neighborhood bars to downtown, which has left some

pockets of the city with little-to-no full service, sit-down

restaurants.

There are no villains in this story. Who can blame

the bar’s current owner, Gerry Burke Jr., for cashing in,

or Davio’s for paying the market rate to acquire one of

the limited-supply licenses? The Burke family also owns

the real estate on Washington Street, which is also ris-

ing in value. “But the real estate in JP is as high as it’s

going to get, and I can’t afford to stay here any more,”

Burke told the Globe.

Real estate prices might be beyond politicians’

control, but politicians created the liquor licensing

system — and maybe a loss that hits so close to home

will be a wake-up call that it’s no longer working in the

public interest.

The arbitrary cap on the number of

liquor licenses in the city — and the abil-

ity of license holders to sell unrestricted

licenses like the one Doyle’s has — limits

economic opportunities and raises the

price of entering the restaurant industry

beyondthereachofmany.Anditharms

neighborhood vitality, as JP residents

are about to find out the hard way.

Ideally, the city should scrap the cap,

get rid of transferable licenses, and shift

to a simple permitting system instead.

The original cap dates to the Depression and is widely

believedtoreflecttheprejudicesofBeaconHill’sthen-

leaders against Irish-Americans. No licenses doesn’t

mean no rules: Restaurants should still have to demon-

strate they can responsibly serve alcohol.

Transitioning to such a system, though, would be

tricky — and is only going to get trickier the longer the

city waits and the more the value of existing licenses

rises.

After all, the owner of Doyle’s isn’t the only local res-

taurateur who counts a valuable license as an asset.

And Davio’s isn’t the only restaurant to spend big mon-

ey on a license, giving them an understandable reason

to complain if the city were to suddenly let competitors

enter the market without one.

Still, those businesses assume the

future value of government-issued

licenses at their own risk. The city has

diluted the value of existing licenses

somewhat by adding a few more in recent

years, and that’s one way forward. Earlier

this year, Mayor Marty Walsh asked

Beacon Hill for another 184 new licenses

that would be nontransferable, and that

would be a big step in the right direction.

Or the city could phase out transfer-

able licenses in a way that softens the financial impact

on existing restaurants, giving them some time to ad-

just.

Either way, the city (and state Legislature, which has

to approve changes to liquor rules) needs to take a hard

look at overhauling the system before more neighbor-

hood institutions announce their own last call.

The city gave Doyle’s a reason to close. Why?

Opinion

BOSTONGLOBE.COM/OPINION

Editorial

Thearbitrary

caponliquor

licensesinthe

citylimits

economic

opportunities.

abcde

Founded 1872

JOHN W. HENRY

Publisher

VINAY MEHRA

President

LINDA PIZZUTI HENRY

Managing Director

SENIOR DEPUTY

MANAGING EDITORS

Mark S. Morrow

Jason M. Tuohey Digital Platforms and Audience Engagement

DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORS

Marjorie Pritchard Editorial Page

David Dahl Print and Operations

Felice Belman Local News and Features

Veronica Chao Living/Arts

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Dhiraj Nayar Chief Financial Officer

Dan Krockmalnic General Counsel

Kayvan Salmanpour Chief Commercial Officer

Anthony Bonfiglio Vice President, Engineering

Claudia Henderson Chief Human Resources Officer

Jane Bowman Vice President, Marketing & Strategic

Partnerships

Dale Carpenter Senior Vice President, Print Operations

Charles H. Taylor Founder & Publisher 1873-

William O. Taylor Publisher 1921-

Wm. Davis Taylor Publisher 1955-

William O. Taylor Publisher 1978-

Benjamin B. Taylor Publisher 1997-

Richard H. Gilman Publisher 1999-

P. Steven Ainsley Publisher 2006-

Christopher M. Mayer Publisher 2009-

Laurence L. Winship Editor 1955-

Thomas Winship Editor 1965-

BRIAN McGRORY

Editor

JENNIFER PETER

Managing Editor

D

oes anyone really think the Republican Party is

suspending some of its presidential primaries

next year merely in order to save money? That’s

Donald Trump’s analysis of recent moves by

four states — Kansas, South Carolina, Arizona,

and Nevada — to bypass nominating contests in

2020. “The four states that canceled don’t want to
      waste their money,” the president opined on Monday. “Having a
      primary election is very expensive.” Of course, it has nothing to do
      with party bosses wanting to clear the field for their mercurial
      president, who generally responds to personal challenges like a
      rabid ferret. With a toothache.
      It’s hard to think of anything more antidemocratic than
      canceling an election, even when the outcome is nearly foregone.
      Disenfranchising an entire state to avoid a Trumpian tantrum is a
      good illustration of what voters dislike about political parties:
      insular, opaque, self-protecting. The states without primaries in
      2020 will instead choose their delegates at party conventions,
      another insiders’ game.
      South Carolina’s decision to cancel its primary means that
      Trump challenger Mark Sanford, that state’s former governor,
      won’t even be able to vote for himself. In Massachusetts,
      Republican loyalists changed the rules so that the primary will be
      winner-take-all, lest Trump be embarrassed by even a few

proportionately allocated delegates going to

favorite son Bill Weld. The one state that can

argue credibly that its decision to forgo a

nomination contest is not designed specifically

to help Trump is Kansas, where the Republican

Party has never bothered to hold a caucus when

an incumbent president is seeking reelection.

To be sure, Democratic state committees have

also foregone presidential primaries. When Bill

Clinton was running for a second term, Democrats canceled

nomination contests in eight states, and in 2012, when Barack

Obama was running, they canceled 10. But most of the states that

declined to hold primaries did so only after none of the potential

challengers qualified for the ballot. And none of the 50 motley

challengers to Obama in 2012 — including such worthies as

performance artist Vermin Supreme — had previously served in

elected office. Despite Trump calling his announced opponents “a

total joke, a laughingstock” and “the Three Stooges,” all three —

Weld, Sanford, and former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh — were

duly elected by thousands of voters in their states. They deserve a

chance to be heard.

Given Trump’s autocratic tendencies (“I hereby order,” “I alone

can fix it”), his critics can be forgiven for thinking that summarily

canceling primary elections is worrisome, even if it is not

unprecedented.

In another imperial move, Trump has refused

even to debate his challengers. Most incumbents

finesse the debate nuisance by scheduling it

during a playoff game or holiday weekend, but

Trump is nothing if not absolute in his scorn for

others. Unlike traditional party conventions,

which usually give token speaking roles to the

nominee’s primary rivals, Trump has made clear

he wants the 2020 Republican convention in Charlotte, N.C., to be

a wall-to-wall infomercial, unsullied by any hint of party disunity.

Even if Trump is right that frugality is what’s driving decisions

to scrap the primaries in the four states (and in others that may

follow suit before the Oct. 1 deadline to call them off), you have to

wonder about the cost-benefit ratio. According to the state’s Re-

publican Party chairman, South Carolina’s primary would have

cost $1.2 million (out of a $9.3 billion state budget). In Arizona,

the state reimburses county election departments at a price of

$1.25 per voter. In Nevada, where the parties themselves pay for

the primaries, the state GOP estimates it will save $150,000 by

scrapping the event. It’s a small price to pay for the most funda-

mental right of self-governance.

Renée Loth’s column appears regularly in the Globe.

Trump’s

primary

objections

Trumpwantsthe

2020convention

tobeawall-to-

wallinfomercial.

ILLUSTRATION BY LESLEY BECKER/GLOBE STAFF; ADOBE; GLOBE FILE PHOTOS

RENÉE LOTH