President Trump’s budget proposal to transfer the contraband cigarette and a few obscure criminal laws relating to alcohol from ATF to TTB “just makes sense,” Brad Buckles, who headed ATF during its transition to the Justice Department, says in a response to Rob Tobiassen’s article questioning the wisdom of the proposal.
Buckles’ comments come just a day after we published a lengthy interview with John Manfreda, TTB’s administrator, insisting the proposal was good government and wouldn’t change the agency’s culture.
Buckles notes that, contrary to Tobiassen’s assertion, “the ‘old’ ATF was not hampered by the fact that agents and inspectors shared the same agency. The challenge was balancing the public safety-based firearms and explosives mission against the largely revenue-based alcohol and tobacco mission. Both missions required the same mix of skill sets, agents and inspectors, but the laws had vastly different drivers. At budget time the urgency of a public safety mission too often trumped the less glamorous but equally vital tax collection and alcohol regulatory mission.
“Moving these last vestiges of alcohol and tobacco authorities to TTB would not recreate the challenges of the old ATF,” Buckles writes, “and signals no change in the mindset or mission of the agency. It simply makes the alcohol and tobacco mission of TTB more complete.
“The bottom line is that ATF retaining these authorities in the first place after its move to the Justice Department was inconsistent with its public safety mission. Now placing all the laws relating to alcohol and tobacco in TTB just makes sense.”