RICHMOND, Va. -- What Alex Graf said began as cooking for friends, throwing parties, and getting shut down by the health department has now turned into one of the most highly-lauded barbecue restaurants in Virginia.
"We started literally in our backyard," Graf, owner of ZZQ in Scott's Addition, said. "We're offering something that is so beautifully unique that we just have a great following.”
But what's not beautifully unique is Graf's concern with how Richmond handles its meals tax. She's part of the growing list of business owners who continue to speak out against what they call unfair, dramatic, and surprise late fees on their accounts.
“We're here feeding the people. We're here feeding you guys, you know? And we pay our meals tax. We’re not trying to cheat the system. We're doing this. We want to be a part of it, but it's incredibly frustrating," Graf said.
In 2020, Graf was late on one meals tax payment when the city was offering a COVID-19 meals tax amnesty program to restaurant owners.
However, the finance department still accrued penalties and interest without ever notifying her.
Many months later in 2021, Graf's accountant happened to catch the problem and she went to City Hall to sort it out.
“I was told I needed to come down there in the next 12 hours and bring a blank check because they didn't know what I owed," Graf said.
Graf was told she owed $6,000, all in late fees, during a time when the pandemic had wreaked havoc on her business.
"That was very uncomfortable. I mean, we had let go of two-thirds of our staff, we weren't even serving in the dining room, we were just serving outside. It was an incredibly stressful time, and that didn't help," Graf said.
“There's no reason that I needed to be treated that way as a human being," she added. "There's no reason we needed to pay that money.”
On Tuesday, Graf joined Mike Byrne with the Virginia Restaurant Association at the General Assembly to voice support for state legislation that aimed to prevent future meals tax dilemmas.
A bill, introduced by Sen. Bill DeSteph (R - Virginia Beach), would allow finance directors to apply tax payments to the current month that the taxpayer is submitting payment for and allow localities to waive penalties if it's in the best interest of the locality.
“The restaurants are 100% behind it. Those that have literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of penalty and interest, through no fault of their own, are totally supportive of it," Byrne said.
But when the bill went before a Senate committee, some lawmakers criticized it, and a majority voted against advancing it.
Sen. Creigh Deeds (D - Charlottesville) moved to table the legislation.
“I think we were all embarrassed by what we read about the City of Richmond, and I don’t want to make any excuses for the city, but localities have the ability to fix this problem, and I think this is a hammer aimed at one locality when we ought to be legislating statewide," Deeds said, adding that he thought it was bad policy.
Later that afternoon, a House committee unanimously voted in favor of another version of the same bill, this one introduced by Del. Delores McQuinn (D - Richmond), which means the bill still has a chance of surviving.
CBS 6 asked Deeds on Wednesday, considering the House committee's support for the bill, whether he'd reconsider supporting the bill with any changes.
"I'll wait to talk to legislators who brought that bill. This didn't come from Richmond legislators. The bills over there did I think," Deeds said.
While a supporter of Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney's run for governor, Deeds said he did "not at all" hear from the city regarding the meals tax bill.
Meanwhile, those in the industry hold out hope for systematic change.
“Sometimes a little bit of a hammer is probably not a bad thing, but it’s also just good fiscal policy," Byrne said.
“In every department, there should be some accountability, and what I’ve seen is an utter lack of accountability," Graf said.
Next week, the Richmond City Council is set to vote on its own local meals tax legislation that would allow the city to separate taxpayers' delinquent accounts from current accounts.
This is a developing story, so anyone with more information can email newstips@wtvr.com to send a tip.
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