If there's one place Gov. Larry Hogan's drive to make Maryland government more business-friendly isn't needed, it's the Baltimore liquor board. To say that it historically has been a rubber stamp for the liquor industry would be incorrect in that it would suggest that the board bothered with the kind of paperwork on which stamps are required. But even if Mr. Hogan wanted his three nominees to steer the board toward greater sympathy for the license holders and less deference to the concerns of the community, we would at least expect them to do so within the confines of the law. Unfortunately, a coalition of neighborhood and community groups is arguing that they are consistently failing to do even that.

The first indication that something was amiss under the new regime was the case of the Stadium Lounge, a notorious bar with a seven-day-a-week package goods operation on York Road in Waverly. For years, neighbors have complained about drunken and disorderly patrons spilling out of the bar, vomiting, urinating and littering in the alleys and generally disrupting the peace. Under the liquor board's old regime — a brief period of pro-community sentiment that flowered in the last couple of years of Gov. Martin O'Malley's term — the Stadium Lounge saw its license suspended for six months after police caught the bar's owner making illegal payouts on “for amusement only” slot machines.

But three weeks after a Hogan apppointee took over as chairman of the liquor board, he allowed the bar to reopen. He did so with no public notice, no testimony from those impacted and no public vote of the board.

And advocates say that was only the beginning. In the subesquent months, they say, the three Hogan appointees have given license holders or seekers extensions the board doesn't have the authority to grant; accepted incomplete applications; and approved licenses without considering applicants' previous violations of the law.

The Community Law Center, which has acted as a watchdog on the liquor board on behalf of communities, has compiled a list of questionable actions by the new board, which it has sent to state senators who are due to vote in the coming weeks on whether to confirm Mr. Hogan's appointees. In addition to the Stadium Lounge case, it includes:

On Oct. 15, the board heard a request for a new license for Posh-Mix on Park Avenue. The owners stated on their application that they had never been found responsible for a liquor law violation, though they had for two separate incidents involving assault and for serving alcohol after hours. The board approved the application anyway.

On Aug. 6, the board considered a transfer of an adult entertainment license to Pole Play on East Baltimore Street. The floor plan the applicant was required to submit consisted of a crudely sketched rectangle with two smaller ones inside — no labels, no measurements, no indication of entrances and exits, tables and chairs, nothing. The board approved the application anyway.

State law says liquor licenses expire after 180 days of disuse. Yet in 2013 a previous (obviously not too business un-friendly) liquor board approved the transfer of the license belonging to the old Martick's restaurant, which had closed in 2008, to an address on Edmondson Avenue in Harlem Park. On Dec. 15, the new, Hogan-appointed liquor board approved another extension for the license even though, by law, it had expired again.

At its Oct. 8 meeting, the board refused to accept a letter from City Councilman Nick Mosby supporting the Robert W. Coleman Community Association in its opposition to a transfer application, claiming it was submitted too late. In a parallel situation at its meeting two weeks later, the board accepted a letter from City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke when she wrote to support a license applicant.

Nominees to local positions like the Baltimore City liquor board are not typically required to appear before the Senate Executive Nominations Committee to answer questions before a confirmation vote, but the city's Senate delegation needs to insist that these three nominees appear in person to answer the community's complaints. Given the massive impact of a history of lax enforcement and an over-saturation of liquor liceses in some communities has had on public health and safety, their answers had better be good.