Years of damning audits leave lawmakers with a looming decision on whether to keep or blow up Tennessee’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
A November performance audit found a continued litany of failures by the commission in several key areas, some of which date back more than a decade and were never corrected.
New management throughout the ABC is left scrambling to pick up the mess from previous administrators. The agency has – among other changes – a new executive director, assistant director, chief law enforcement officer, administrative services director and new commissioners appointed by Gov. Bill Haslam, Director Clay Byrd said.
“When we became aware of [the findings], we immediately put action into place,” Assistant Director Zach Blair said. “We’re all new leadership. We take it very seriously, and we can’t speak to what previous management accomplished or didn’t accomplish.”
Byrd and Blair were both outside hires who began with ABC over the summer.