This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
An uninvited customer at the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control's Bountiful liquor store seems to have left a message recently letting officials know what he thinks of the Legislature's convoluted liquor laws.
He defecated on the floor by the beer displays.
Of course, nobody was there at the time, and he didn't enter the store the traditional way.
When the store manager arrived at 6 a.m., he found a rock had been thrown through the front window. The intruder partied for a while with the unlimited amount of booze on the shelves.
The store recently was remodeled and the lavatory was secured with a code lock. Employees could allow patrons to use it by punching in the code.
When the intruder couldn't get into the restroom, he just used the sales floor.
He was still in the parking lot trying to break into nearby cars when the manager discovered the dooty deed. The cops came quickly and arrested the very intoxicated man.
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Speaking of liquor stores • Just when they start adding code-secured restrooms, they take away the reading materials one might entertain oneself with while being otherwise occupied.
After several years of City Weekly newspapers being available in the entryway of many state liquor stores, the DABC decided to disallow the papers.
DABC spokeswoman Vicki Ashby says that when other free publications noticed the City Weekly stacks at some of the stores in Utah County, they wanted their issues there as well. That triggered a discussion among DABC officials about allowing publications that advertise liquor, since advertising liquor is off-limits in the stores. Bottom line: If you want to read while using the bathroom at a liquor store, bring your own material.
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Column item • Matt Pacenza recent got a ticket for going too fast up Mill Creek Canyon.
He says the Unified Police Department deputy was courteous, and he deserved the ticket. But paying his fine became more problematic. He followed the instructions on the ticket and logged on to http://www.justicecourtslco.org to pay online with his credit card.
After his attempt was rejected several times, he determined it was a "typosquatting" site, which is there for people who mistype an address or takes the place of a real site after it expires.
When he called the court, he and the clerk finally figured out that the email address on the ticket was wrong. There is supposed to be a dot between justicecourt and slco.
Wonder how many others couldn't pay their fines on time because of the ticket typo.
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Passing the buck • Utahns who called GOP Rep. Chris Stewart's office to complain about the government shutdown — including business owners in southern Utah who are being devastated by the national park closures — were greeted with a phone message that infuriated them further.
The recorded message said no one could take their call because of the shutdown. It then encouraged them to call the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and complain to him.
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It's not so bad • I reported in Wednesday's column that the Utah Republican Party is $90,000 in debt and has asked some of the county GOP committees to kick in their share of the state Check-a-Buck donations on income tax returns to the state party.
It turns out that $62,000 of that debt is owed to itself, just from one account to another. So the GOP actually owes about $27,000 to outside vendors. But the state party still wants the counties to fork over money.
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Liberals are thrifty? • While the Republicans are slightly in debt, the Utah Democratic Party is $309,000 in the black, according to its report to the State Central Committee last week.