After months of a legal and political campaign to slash Allegheny County's 10 percent drink tax by referendum on the Nov. 4 ballot, the restaurant and bar owners opposed to the levy appear to have run out of time.

The anti-drink tax group Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation, which wants to reduce the levy to 0.5 percent, appeared to lose its last chance to get its question on the ballot when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued no directive concerning drink tax referenda by Tuesday.

The tax was implemented in January along with a $2-a-day tax on car rentals to fund the county's $30 million subsidy of mass transit.

The county elections division yesterday started printing absentee ballots without the FACT question and one proposed by Allegheny County Council, which asked voters if they wanted to replace the drink tax with an increase in property taxes.

The high court last week received legal briefs concerning both questions, which were disallowed by the county board of elections and Common Pleas and Commonwealth courts. But Tuesday, the last day that county officials could have made changes to the ballot, came and went without a ruling.

In light of that, Solicitor Michael Wojcik said the county, which notified the Supreme Court of its deadline to send the ballots to the printer, has begun the printing process and will start mailing absentee ballots by Tuesday.

"We are now going forward with processing the ballots because we are caught between a rock and a hard place," Mr. Wojcik said.

Kevin Evanto, spokesman for County Executive Dan Onorato, said the county was advised by the Pennsylvania Department of State not to wait for a directive from the Supreme Court and to proceed with ballot printing and mailing.

Cristopher Hoel, a FACT attorney, said the county may have "to start this whole [ballot printing process] again if the Supreme Court rules on this issue later this week."