Several communities are already preparing to hold referenda this year, said the report, as Deal had already indicated he would sign the bill that had failed to pass the state legislature for the past several years under opposition from former governor Sonny Perdue.
The Woodstock City Council told the city manager Monday night to [image-nocss] prepare to get a referendum on the November ballot. The Loganville City Council become the first city in metropolitan Atlanta to let its residents decide whether to allow Sunday sales of alcohol, the report added. Dunwoody, Snellville and Smyrna have also begun the process of having a vote this year, it said.
Retail organizations, including the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores and the Georgia Retail Association, back the measure, saying not only would it help their businesses, it would help the counties generate money. "It's going to be an appreciable increase in sales," John Heavener, president of the retail association, told The Forsyth News. "It's also going to mean increased tax revenue for Georgia, and that's going to help at this time. As time passes, you're going to see more and more municipalities and counties, at least in the greater Atlanta area...embrace this. I think some rural areas will probably always stay dry and will probably never embrace this, but that's their choice. And that's the whole idea is to give people the choice about what they want to do."
Jim Tudor, president of the convenience stores association, said it is not just local governments. The state is losing revenue as residents cross the border into Tennessee, Alabama, Florida and the Carolinas to buy alcohol at stores on Sundays. "Along Georgia's borders, where we have Georgians that leave every Sunday and go into [neighboring states], those convenience store operators would have the ability to keep existing Georgians," Tudor told the newspaper. "You don't have to get new customers if you can start keeping the ones that are going into other states, and that's going to mean an increase in business."
Heavener said his organization and others have worked on trying to allow Sunday sales for years. For retailers, he said, it is a "big thing to have to shut down two aisles of their store on the busiest day of the week for some of them. It just hurts their business and it this makes it possible for them to compete fairly with people who are in surrounding states that do not have Sunday sales laws."
Tudor added that it is going to take a while for individual governments to offer a referendum. As some cities and counties start selling alcohol on Sunday, neighboring counties may latch on. "If they see they're losing dollars to other counties, they may want to reconsider their position," he said.
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