With Allegheny County's 10 percent drink tax set to take effect on Tuesday, restaurateurs and bar owners yesterday asked a Common Pleas judge to block it.

Judge W. Terrence O'Brien was expected to rule today.

Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation, a lobbying group formed by the hospitality industry, asked Judge O'Brien to issue a temporary injunction against the tax.

Opponents said it would be impossible to comply with the tax, approved by County Council Dec. 4 as part of a dedicated funding stream for the county's $30 million subsidy of the Port Authority. Among the logistical problems is updating cash registers to calculate the tax, they said.

They also said the levy, authorized by the state Legislature, is unconstitutional.

"There is an uncommon rush in December to impose a new year's tax," said Ronald Barber, an attorney for FACT. The nonprofit lobbying group comprises several Pittsburgh restaurants and bars but listed Big Burrito Restaurant Group and The Church Brew Works in Lawrenceville as co-plaintiffs in the suit.

Mr. Barber asked Judge O'Brien for an order suspending implementation of the tax for four to six weeks. He said the county hastily pushed through the tax, which the county treasurer was not ready to implement and restaurateurs and bar owners are not ready to collect.

He also said state Act 44, a highway funding bill that authorized the drink tax and a $2-a-day car rental tax, was unconstitutional.

Mr. Barber said his clients need an injunction so they can properly challenge the drink tax at a hearing within the next few weeks.

The injunction would also give the county and the hospitality industry time to better prepare for the tax in the event that it withstands a legal challenge, he said.

Allegheny County Solicitor Michael Wojcik said the drink tax can withstand constitutional muster because Act 44 did not impose the taxes but authorized the county to do so.

He said restaurateurs and bar owners had enough time to prepare for the tax.

"To say that they didn't have notice [of the fact they would have to update their cash registers] is ludicrous," he said. The coalition of restaurateurs and bar owners who opposed the tax followed the debate at every step since June, he said.

He added that the protesters "were at many of those [County Council] meetings and they never mentioned that they would have a problem with updating their cash registers."

Mr. Barber said that Murrie Emamzadeh, an account executive with MICROS Systems Inc., a company that installs and updates cash registers for the hospitality industry, warned county officials on numerous occasions that updating systems to calculate the drink tax would be a problem if and when the tax was approved.

Mr. Barber contended the tax is discriminatory because it applies to beer six-packs purchased at bars or restaurants but not to cases sold by distributors.

The fact that the county treasurer had not clarified until Dec. 21 whether carry-out six packs of beer would be taxed illustrates how unprepared the county was, and that has left restaurateurs and bar owners even more unprepared, he said.

Another issue resolved yesterday in court dealt with the question of when Jan. 1 starts for purposes of collecting the tax.

Rather than forcing establishments to start collecting it at the height of New Year's Eve revelry, the parties agreed to have it take effect at 6 a.m. Tuesday.