The Boston Licensing Board yesterday ordered the owner of 5 North Square to take out the bar seats in a room where servers pick up drinks and patrons wait for tables.

The move came after complaints from some nearby residents about the restaurant's "service" bar, which is only supposed to prepare drinks for patrons eating meals, but which had a few seats at which waiting patrons could order both food and drinks from waitresses.

The restaurant had asked the board to remove the "service" restriction, but the board voted to keep that restriction in place. It also ruled waiting patrons could be served no more than one drink while waiting.

The Bulletin reports on an only-in-Boston situation that could force Knights of Columbus halls and similar facilities to shut down and create problems at the city's two public golf courses.

The Boston Licensing Board, whose members are appointed by the governor, has been granting the facilities "temporary" liquor licenses for decades, but only recently found out that, in 1991, the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor, ruled any one organization could get a special license for no more than 30 days a year. And now the board says the commission is ignoring its requests for a meeting to do something about the anomaly - which only applies in Boston.

The story gets even better - read down far enough to see the brilliant solution that Licensing Board Chairman Daniel Pokaski has come up with.

The Herald reports that Licensing Board member Michael Connolly has been using his City Hall office to conduct business for his Wellesley real-estate venture:

... Connolly, 61 - whose wife, Lynda, is chief justice of the Massachusetts District Court and whose son, John, is a Boston City Councilor - has spent untold hours promoting the $3.6 million Wellesley development from his City Hall office over the past two years. ...

The mayor's office went tsk-tsk and says it's launched an investigation. Although the board has office space in City Hall, its members are appointed by the governor. Board Chairman Daniel Pokaski's name figured prominently in the FBI's affidavit against ex-Sen. Dianne Wilkerson.

The Herald notes that Connolly gets paid $85,000 a year for his part-time gig on the licensing board.

David: As if we needed another reason to dismantle the Boston Licensing Board.

Jay Fitzgerald: It's not enough he gets a cushy $85,000 Boston Licensing Board job:

It's not enough his wife is on the public payroll. It's not enough his son is on the public payroll. No, Mike has to use public facilities to run his side business pushing multimillion-dollar developments opposed by neighbors. ...

You know, the people who, according to an affidavit from an FBI agent, gave Dianne Wilkerson's Best Briber Forever a liquor license without holding the required hearing on it. Kevin McCrea has the latest, including his own findings, such as:

... The Board does not keep minutes of its meetings, they keep audio recordings which are available for $15 and a blank tape. This is against best practices as described by the Attorney General's office at best, and could be a violation itself. ...

Won't quit her Senate job just yet to ensure "an orderly transition," she claims.

Meanwhile, Daniel Pokaski flees a reporter who wants to know what he thinks about a federal complaint that paints him as a less than flattering character in the Wilkerson affair.

Oh, and a mayoral flunky tells one blogger (and plaintiff) that the mayor has "no influence on the licensing board."

Somewhat lost in the coverage of Deval Patrick's new interest in State House ethics yesterday was his call to reduce the number of times local cities and towns have to to the legislature for permission to do various things. Mike Ball analyzes his call for greater home rule, in which he said:

The current home rule structure dates from the 1960s and guarantees that the Legislature and the Executive spend an inordinate amount of time deciding when and how localities can tax, borrow, regulate private and, and make rules for municipal elections. Forty percent of all legislation passed over the last two years was local laws that affect only one community. Sponsors of home rule bills are often forced to expend a great deal of time and political capital to get non-controversial, purely local matters moving and enacted, rather than working on matters of broader concern.

Naturally, one could argue this is tied to the Wilkerson case since half of it (the Dejavue part) centers around a holdover from the days of anti-Irish hatred on Beacon Hill - alone among Massachusetts cities and towns, Boston does not control its own liquor licenses, which are instead doled out by a state board. And the Wilkerson complaint alleges she used her influence in the senate to hold up a home-rule petition from Boston to eliminated a preliminary election in 2007 as a way of forcing councilors to put pressure on that board to give Dejavu a license.

Kevin McCrea reports he filed a formal complaint yesterday over the way Dianne Wilkerson's alleged briber got his liquor license.

He posts a copy of his complaint with the Suffolk County DA's office over an Aug. 15, 2007 meeting of the Boston Licensing Board. As noted in the FBI affidavit in the bribery case against Wilkerson, the board did not have Dejavu on its schedule and did not discuss the application and, yet, "on August 16, 2007, the BLB issued a letter notifying Dejavu that its petition for a malt and liquor license had been granted."

Worth noting is that the affidavit specifies that FBI agents attended the Aug. 15 hearing. It'd be interesting if Suffolk County prosecutors interviewed them for their investigation of McCrea's complaint.

Kevin McCrea, whose hobby sometimes seems to be suing the Boston City Council over Open Meeting Law violations (in cases he always seems to win), paid close attention to all the Open Meeting Law and state ethics violations in the Wilkerson affidavit (there's a whole section devoted to how Wilkerson's briber got a liquor-license OK from the Boston Licensing Board even though the matter wasn't on the board's agenda). One guess what he did:

I called the [Suffolk County] District Attorney's office today and spoke with the gentleman in charge of ethics and Open Meeting Law violations. Of course he had read the FBI indictment of Wilkerson. So I asked,"did you notice any Open Meeting Law violations?" and he said "you mean at the Licensing Board?"

Hopefully we will have the DA working on some of these cases soon, as the Feds are not interested in State Open Meeting Laws. ...

Meanwhile, west of 495, Jody takes note of our fascinating little case and announces: I am willing to stuff my bra full of any bribe money you want to give me - under one condition:

...[I]f you are going to take photos of me taking the cash and sticking it in my bra, can you make sure you use a flattering camera angle? The whole "under the table" thing really accents areas of my being that we should probably all just ignore.