The Iowa House of Representatives is considering a bill that would require the registration of beer kegs, making the buyer responsible if minors consume alcohol from it.

The bill, introduced by State Reps. Cecil Dolecheck, R-Mount Ayr and Mike Reasoner, D-Creston, was written by three high school students from Lamoni.

“Students from a community in my old district [which is now Reasoner’s], came to me with the legislation,” Dolecheck said. “One had a cousin who had been killed in a car accident on the way home from a keg party.”

Keg registration would require a buyer to leave his or her name, driver’s license number, date of birth and address with the liquor store. A sticker with a registration number linked to the buyer’s information would then be affixed to the keg.

If the keg was found where minors were drinking, police would use the registration information to trace the buyer and hold him or her accountable.

The bill is currently in the House’s State Government Committee, awaiting approval to go before the House for a vote.

The timing of the bill might help its passage, said Shirley Kessel, adult volunteer for Iowans to Reduce Underage Drinking.

“The bill has its best chance because it’s an election year,” she said. “This bill won’t cost much to start but it could have a positive impact. There’s a lot of politics involved in what happens.”

A keg registration law would probably not hurt local liquor store business but would add paperwork and complication to keg sales, said Rich Parizek, manager of the Keg Shop, 218 Welch Ave., Suite 3.

“It will make selling kegs more of a hassle than in the past if we have to sticker them,” Parizek said. “We’re against it as a business.”

Dennis Gano, owner of Cyclone Liquors, 626 Lincoln Way, said kegs are already tracked through the deposits buyers make on the keg shells and taps.

“We have a record of who buys kegs,” Gano said. “People sign for kegs and leave their name, phone number and address already.”

With a little investigation, he said, police could use this information to find those who provide alcohol to minors.

Though his store opposes the bill, Parizek said he believes it would be effective.

“I think it will actually make people think twice about buying for minors,” he said.

The Ames Police Department supports any proposal to help curb underage drinking, said Cmdr. Jim Robinson of the Ames Police Department. However, he said he wondered if increased keg regulations would lead to higher sales of other forms of alcohol for underage people.

“Often people can buy beer in bottles and cans as cheaply as in a keg,” he said. “If we have keg registration, we will continue to see an increase in bottles and cans instead.”

Reaction on campus to the proposed bill was mixed.

Brian Dunn, health program coordinator at the Thielen Student Health Center, said he thinks the bill is a positive step.

“I don’t think registration is a silver bullet for underage drinking problems, but it is a good step,” Dunn said.

The law might have an impact on house parties where cups are sold to underage drinkers, he said.

“Rather than a situation where police show up and everyone scatters and we don’t know who supplied the beer, we would have a tag with a person’s name,” Dunn said.

Ryan Eisele, senior in civil engineering, said he thinks the bill is unfair.

“They’re making us register so they can get more people in trouble,” he said.

Eisele, who said he bought as many as three kegs a week when he was younger, gave a hypothetical situation showing a danger in the registration law. While one person may buy a keg early on the night of a party, he said, usually another, sober driver goes to buy a second keg later in the evening if the party requires it. This law would likely cause the first keg buyer, who may be drunk by the time the second keg is needed, to return, so only one name is registered.

The city of Ames already has a keg ordinance on the books, Robinson said. The law, instituted after the Veishea riots in the late 1980s, requires parties with two or more kegs to register with the city beforehand.

“The ordinance has dramatically reduced parties — I mean the mega-parties that we used to have,” he said.

If the bill passes the House and Senate and is approved by Gov. Tom Vilsack, the soonest the bill would become law is July 1, Dolecheck said.