Seated in a dimly lit dining room at Casbah in Shadyside last week, Pittsburgh restaurateurs Kevin Joyce, Tom Baron and John Graf pondered their chances of defeating Allegheny County's 10 percent alcohol tax.

"We've got a good shot at it," said Mr. Joyce, proprietor of The Carlton restaurant, Downtown.

The three are some of the key players behind the group Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation, or FACT.

The group consists of some of the biggest restaurateurs and bar owners around town who want to reduce or repeal the controversial drink tax that was established in January as a dedicated stream of funding for mass transit.

And since it was proposed last June and approved by County Council in December, together with a $2-a-day tax on car rentals, the drink tax has -- by their own admission -- turned these restaurateurs from onlookers into watchdogs of county government and some of the most vocal critics of county Chief Executive Dan Onorato and his administration.

"We are fighting for our businesses, our livelihood," said Mr. Baron, 43, whose big Burrito Restaurant Group not only owns Casbah but also a number of other trendy restaurants around town.

Since last fall, some members of this group have attended almost every County Council and budget committee meeting. They have testified before council, prepared an economic impact study, and held a number of meetings with council members and Mr. Onorato -- all in attempts to either stop the drink tax or repeal it, but to no avail.

In their efforts to defeat the levy since, the restaurateurs have filed a lawsuit on behalf of all liquor license holders and they are in the midst of a drive to collect some 23,006 signatures to put the drink tax to a referendum vote in November.

Their objective is to have voters approve a significant scale down of the levy from 10 percent to 0.5 percent -- a move which Mr. Onorato says would effectively kill his plan to create a dedicated funding stream for the county's $30 million subsidy of the Port Authority.

"We are not against [Mr. Onorato's plan to create dedicated transit funding], we just happen to think that government should be as unobtrusive as possible, especially in this economic climate," said Mr. Graf, 43, a Pittsburgh native who owns and operates The Priory Hotel and Hospitality Group.

The restaurateurs argue that instead of creating a drink tax for mass transit, Mr. Onorato should have considered a broad-based funding option like an increase in the sales tax that does not specifically target one industry.

Furthermore, the restaurateurs, who have challenged Mr. Onorato to a series of public debates on the levy, contend that he is disingenuously scaring voters into supporting the levy by threatening to raise property taxes by 25 percent if the drink tax is repealed.

The group is currently in talks with public relations firms in Michigan, Harrisburg and Washington, D.C., to run their "Whiskey Rebellion II" campaign leading up to the vote in November.

A New York City native, Mr. Baron said he and many of his colleagues are fighting the drink tax because they see their life's work slipping away.

"I've been in this business since I was 14 years old. I started out washing dishes, and I have worked my way up since," he said.

Raised in Riverdale in the Bronx, Mr. Baron's first business in Pittsburgh was Wheel Deliver that delivered food from restaurants to homes. He sold it in 1994 after opening a Mad Mex restaurant, and now runs a number of restaurants, including Eleven, Kaya, Soba and Umi.

"I made it after years of struggle, and this drink tax is really hurting our industry. I really get offended when people say we are just a bunch of elitist restaurateurs. I know what it means to go belly-up," Mr. Baron said.

Furthermore, the restaurateurs contend, the drink tax is especially onerous because it is an additional tax to the five-tiered alcohol tax imposed by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. And with the exception of Philadelphia, which doesn't use a drink tax for transit funding, no other metropolitan region has a 10 percent drink tax.

Long considered the dean of the local hospitality industry, Mr. Joyce, 54, also started in the restaurant business at age 14, as a busboy at the Chester Valley Country Club near Philadelphia.

A Pittsburgh native who grew up in Philadelphia, Mr. Joyce opened The Carlton with partners in 1984, before taking full ownership in 1995. Since then, he said, what was once a vibrant clientele in Pittsburgh has been slowly declining.

"There was a time when we were doing very well. But we have been suffering since about 2001," Mr. Joyce said. "We are seeing less and less customers, and now this drink tax is forcing people to change their habits. People who once ordered a bottle of wine are now ordering beer."

A former chairman of the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association, Mr. Joyce is no stranger to the power circles on Grant Street and in Harrisburg. In fact, during last year's budget deliberations, some County Council members at times called him "the 16th member of council," a reference he doesn't take as a compliment.

But Mr. Joyce, an early supporter of Allegheny County's smoking ban when it was proposed, knows a political fight when he sees one.

"I fought [former Pittsburgh Mayor] Tom Murphy when he tried to bring this drink tax five years ago, and now, I'm fighting [Mr. Onorato]," he said. But he is quick to add that taking on a popular two-time county chief executive has its price.

"It doesn't feel good. My restaurant is where the political elite in this city like to come and cut deals," he said.

"I used to have [Mr. Onorato] all the time. Now, I never see him anymore or some of the people I know that won't come because they know how [Mr. Onorato] feels about me," he added.