CRAFT BREW LEGISLATIVE PACKAGE: State Comptroller Peter Franchot unveiled a legislative package Monday that would make sweeping changes to the state’s regulation of craft breweries. Among other things, Franchot’s 12-point “Reform on Tap Act of 2018” would eliminate limits on sales from taprooms and for take-home consumption for the state’s breweries, Sarah Gantz of the Sun reports. The proposal is intended to do away with regulations Franchot said have stifled one of the state’s most promising economic engines.

If Maryland’s debate over brewery regulations had happened a year earlier, Frederick’s Attaboy Beer would be one state to the north or one state to the south, owner Carly Ogden said Monday. “The target is moving too much to invest our life savings here,” said Ogden, who, with other craft brewery owners, has opposed Maryland manufacturing limits that they say artificially cap their future growth, Danielle Gaines of the Frederick News-Post reports.
Franchot said he is prepared for a multi-year fight to change what he called archaic laws that prevent an expansion of craft beer brewing in Maryland, Bryan Sears of the Daily Record writes. “I believe at some point this legislation will pass unanimously,” Franchot said.

STATE AUDIT CONDEMNS BCCC FISCAL PRACTICES: Legislative auditors issued a damning report about lax and possibly illegal financial practices at Baltimore City Community College, an institution already under state pressure to fix its dwindling enrollment and improve its management, reports Len Lazarick for MarylandReporter. Auditors passed along some of these transactions to the attorneys general’s office for possible criminal prosecution, something the college itself was supposed to do after its own investigation of tips on the college hotline.