State GOP Leader Not So Hot on 4 a.m. Bar Closings
Bad news, hard-drinking millennials: It might be a while before you can keep your late-night bar parties going all the way to 4 a.m.: At least one key leader of the Pennsylvania GOP, it turns out, is pretty down on the idea of keeping bars open past the current state-mandated closing time of 2 a.m.
“Yeah, I represent a college town, so I’m not sure I want to keep the bars open an extra two hours, with 15,000 college students,” House majority leader Dave Reed — who represents the district containing Indiana University of Pennsylvania — told KYW. “So, we’ll see.”
Philly Rep. Jordan Harris said last week he would propose a bill allowing some bars to stay open to 4 a.m. He pitched the proposal as a means to entice millennials to come live and work in Philadelphia. The bill, he said, would be designed to keep the late-opening bars out of residential neighborhoods and confined to larger-scale “entertainment districts.”
“Philadelphia especially has lagged behind other major cities within a short radius as far as nightlife is concerned,” Harris said in a statement announcing his proposal, “and this bill would put our city on par with some of the largest cities in the country as far as having a healthy, vibrant nightlife.”
But maybe not quite yet.
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