NEVADA – Story County Attorney Steve Holmes notified Story County supervisors Tuesday of the latest changes to a proposed keg ordinance. The changes would require keg retailers to maintain purchase logs and track individual kegs through an approved labeling system.

A report from Holmes indicated two major changes to the previous ordinance, including a time requirement that would limit law enforcement officers’ ability to access keg retailers’ records.

According to the proposed changes, a request for records by law enforcement officers will be prospective only and the request will only be honored after 12 hours.

“This is to address concerns that were raised about law enforcement being able to go to a retailer and ask for a record that was recently made to locate or to identify where a party is being held,” he said. “I have a particular concern about building language into an ordinance that restricts law enforcement or even implies law enforcement is going to do something improper.”

Ames Police Commander Randy Kessel said officers would use records allowed by a keg ordinance if a more intensive investigation required it, but he cannot remember any incidents where police have used vendors’ records in the past.

Holmes read a Story County Sheriff’s incident report from Oct. 22 to illustrate the usefulness of the ordinance for law enforcement officers to identify persons supplying alcohol to underage drinkers.

According to the report, after the sheriff’s deputies were called to a rural house party, they found evidence of alcohol, including four kegs, and identified approximately 15 to 20 juveniles in attendance.

“I think there has been a lot of concern expressed by members of the Iowa State student body, and I think the misconception is that this is focused on them – and it isn’t,” he said.

Both Holmes and Greg Bonett, president of the Iowa State chapter of the ACLU, said each benefited from a recent discussion about the access of keg records.

After that discussion, Bonett, junior in electrical engineering, said the ACLU has decided to change its original amendment to be similar to the Government of the Student Body’s resolution passed in October that included a recommendation that a court-issued warrant be filed before a keg purchaser’s name is released.

Members of the group were at Tuesday’s meeting to give Holmes a copy of the new amendment, which Bonett said “still protects against extreme misuses of the ordinance but still protects its effectiveness, too.”

Bonett said he did not think Holmes would support the amendment, however.

Holmes said no search warrant exists but is confident he was able to clear up privacy concerns.

“Other people’s records and the ability of law enforcement to obtain those records are really two different things,” he said.

Story County Supervisor Jane Halliburton asked Holmes why he did not include a review statement within the ordinance that would report the law’s overall effects, a question similar to the GSB’s suggestion that, before the ordinance’s passage, a commitment to study its effect be conducted.

“No one knows how this is going to affect our community,” GSB President Angela Groh said, adding this was especially so when other community groups are supportive of similar conditions.

Holmes said he could understand GSB’s concern, but it was something he didn’t know how to quantify.

“Essentially, what you’re asking for, is information from an underage person who’s going to break the law concerning alcohol to essentially supply us with information when they’re confronted with whatever measures were taken to stop that [action] and change their mind,” he said.

Holmes also proposed changing deposit fees. After receiving feedback from concerned retailers that the standard $50 fee he proposed in September could affect sales, he said he is now proposing individual retailers set that amount.

No changes were made to a section that addresses a 60-day limit on returning kegs to retailers.