Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Legal Services

TO:	David L. Corliss, Assistant City Manager & Director of Legal Services
FROM:	Scott J. Miller, Staff Attorney
Date:	May 27, 2005
RE:	Certain Public Offenses Involving Minors and Alcohol

Both the State of Kansas and the City of Lawrence have criminalized the possession and consumption of alcoholic beverages by individuals under the age of twenty one.  See K.S.A. 41-727 and Section 4-103 of the City Code.  Kansas Statutes also prohibit furnishing alcoholic beverages to minors and intentionally hosting gatherings where children under the age of eighteen are served or can possess alcoholic beverages.  K.S.A. 21-3610; K.S.A. 21-3610c.  Lawrence has not adopted ordinances that prohibit these two types of conduct.

Table 1, below, surveys the codes of several representative cities in an effort to determine whether adopting ordinances that proscribe these behaviors is the majority position.   Each city surveyed has illegalized furnishing alcohol to a minor, and a majority of the Kansas cities surveyed have adopted ordinances substantially similar to K.S.A. 21-3610c, the unlawful hosting statute. 

I have spoken with Jerry Little, the City’s Supervising City Prosecutor, about these offenses.  He supports the adoption of a furnishing alcohol to a minor ordinance to enable those offenses to be prosecuted in Municipal Court.  I believe adoption of an Unlawful Hosting ordinance also makes sense in that it closes a gap in the coverage of our ordinances, allowing the minors who possess alcohol, the people who supply them alcohol, and the people who intentionally provide a place for children under the age of eighteen to consume alcohol all to be prosecuted by the same entity.

The attached ordinance amends the current Code provision that illegalizes the possession and consumption of alcoholic beverages by minors to include changes to K.S.A. 41-727 made during the 2004 legislative session.  The legislature amended K.S.A. 41-727 to provide increasing terms of drivers license suspension for recidivist Minor in Possession offenders.  Previously, the statute required a thirty day suspension of driving privileges upon conviction.  The City Code currently incorporates the old provision at 4-103(C)(2).  This ordinance adopts the State’s progressive scale for driving privilege suspensions including a thirty day suspension for first time offenders, ninety days suspension upon a second conviction, and a year of suspended privileges for third or subsequent convictions.

This ordinance also establishes two new public offenses, Unlawful Hosting of Minors, and Furnishing Alcoholic Beverage to Minors.  These offenses substantially mirror the analogous Kansas Statutes, except in regards to their penalty provisions.  Kansas law sets the minimum fine for a violation of any of these three ordinances at $200.  Because the governing body has previously decided to increase the minimum penalty for Minor in Possession under our City Code to $300, I have drafted this ordinance setting the minimum fine for each of these offenses at $300 for the sake of consistency.

TABLE 1

CITY	MINOR IN POSSESSION CODE	FURNISHING ALCOHOL TO A MINOR CODE	UNLAWFUL HOSTING CODE
Lenexa	3-9-G-3(A)	3-9-G-3(B)	3-9-G-4
Manhattan	4-3(a)&(b)	4-3(c)	4-3(d)
Olathe	9.06.080	9.06.020	9.06.090
Overland Park	11.48.110	11.48.120	11.48.125
Salina	5-1	25-81	None
Topeka	10-55	10-3	None
Wichita	4.04.025	4.04.025	None
Boulder, CO	5-7-4	5-7-3	None
Columbia, MO	4-20	4-16	None