If I walk into a store and buy a car and then the dealership says, We won’t give you the key. No key for you. $50,000 car, no key for you, that’s exactly the same thing we’re doing to all of these businesses. Buy from us, pay your dues, no go with running your business. No way to recoup the costs of being in business. And we’re going to honestly stand here today and say, Oh, I can’t accept this because we’re going to lose money. We’re losing money that’s unfairly acquired by the state. It’s unduly gained by the state. It’s immoral. It is repugnant to the people whom we represent that we would take their money and not give them permission to do what they paid to do from us.
It’s shocking to me that this would even be debatable. We should have months ago given them their money back, or prorated at the very least what they paid last year, but that actually costs the state more money to do than to simply say, We’ll give you a year without having to pay for this to make up for what happened last year. This is the simpler way. I beg members to reconsider any opposition to this. This is something small we can do, and I beg you to consider the fact that the fees last year that we charge on alcohol have brought to this state more money last year than we’ve ever taken in before—a gain of more than 20 percent was had by this state on alcohol sales—and we’re going to stand here and pretend that we can’t pay people back their own money because we told them they couldn’t be in business?
It’s absolutely shocking, and I beg members to reconsider this and give some relief back to these people for what we basically stole from them last year.
The following bill was read a third time:
Senate Bill No. 371, entitled
A bill to create the child abuse offenders database; to prescribe the powers and duties of certain departments and agencies in connection with that database; and to prescribe penalties and sanctions.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
Senator Theis offered the following substitute:
Substitute (S-1).
The substitute was adopted, a majority of the members serving voting therefor.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: