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The Dripby Mark Reutter5:00 pmApr 27, 20160

City Hall appoints three new liquor board members

Dana Moore, a liquor commissioner during the Tom Ward era, returns to the board

UPDATE: The newly-sworn-in board will meet Thursday (4/28) at 10 a.m. at City Hall to hear a backlog of liquor license cases.

After several weeks of dormancy occasioned by a grudge match between Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and Democrats in the General Assembly, Baltimore’s Liquor Board has three new commissioners.

Under a new process approved by the General Assembly, Baltimore’s mayor gets to appoint the commissioners. The terms of three commissioners that Hogan had appointed last year expired after the Maryland Senate refused to confirm them in the face of community opposition.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake today appointed three lawyers to the board jointly with City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young. The appointees were sworn in immediately and are expected to resume Liquor Board deliberations tomorrow.

They are:

• Albert J. Matricciani Jr., an attorney with Whiteford, Taylor & Preston and a former judge on the Baltimore Circuit Court and Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

• Dana Peterson Moore, a liquor commissioner during the chairmanship of former Judge Thomas Ward, who was replaced by Gov. Hogan last summer. She resigned as a member of the Baltimore Planning Commission upon being sworn in as a liquor commissioner today.

• Aaron Greenfield, an Annapolis lawyer-lobbyist who was a former special city solicitor for ex-mayor Martin O’Malley.

Since the summer, the Liquor Board was locked in battles with community groups that contended that the Hogan appointees unduly favored tavern owners. Senior staff, including, most recently, executive director Michelle Bailey-Hedgepeth, left the agency under the brief chairmanship of Benjamin A. Neil.

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