Excerpt from Christina Devereux comments in 6/18/13 Brew story

“In the past two weeks, the Board has started saying, when they
make these approvals, that they are ‘preliminary approvals’ and that the
applicant will have to get all the required documentation to the Board
before the license is issued.

This basically comes down to the difference between “approval”
and “issuance.” The Commissioners approve licenses, and after they
approve them, the Board issues them.

In “preliminarily” approving the license, the Board is giving itself an out if all the documentation ends up not being in place.

There are two problems with this, though.

First, the audit shows that the documentation is not being
consistently checked after approval and before issuance (it found that
28 out of 30 licenses did not meet all legal requirements).

Second, when the Board approves a license without having all
information (such as the name of the LLC or the residence of the
applicant), it is approving an application that the surrounding
community – whom state law gives a concrete role in evaluating the
application – has not had the opportunity to review, because it will be
changed after the public hearing.”