The Austin City Council will decide Monday whether hosts of parties where minors drink alcohol should be subject to punishment.

If the so-called “social host” ordinance passes, people who knowingly allow minors to drink without taking steps to prevent it would be slapped with misdemeanors.

A draft ordinance was received favorably by council during a Oct.19 work session and the potential law has wide-ranging community support.

The Austin Area Drug Task Force, which is comprised of local teachers, leaders and law enforcement personnel, presented the draft and has been pushing for the law to pass.

“I really have confidence that this is a good ordinance,” said Bonnie Rietz, former mayor of Austin and current member of the task force.

There is no specific state law regarding social hosts — only penalties for those who actually furnish alcohol to minors.

If Austin passes the ordinance, it would join roughly 30 other cities and counties in Minnesota with such a law on the books.

Rietz said it would give law enforcement some “teeth” — and she added that officials in Albert Lea have applauded their ordinance since it was adopted last December. That law helped guide the Austin task force.

“Yes, it’s working for them,” Rietz said.

Police chief Paul Philipp, who is also on the task force, said he too has heard Albert Lea officials praise their new, tougher law.

Philipp said underage drinking is a problem in Austin but this ordinance would allow parents and others a better way to fight it.

“They work,” he said of social host laws.

St. Paul is the most recent city to enact a social host ordinance — the measure passed last month — and it did so quite easily.

The ordinance passed unanimously and a public hearing held earlier did not provide any dissent, the Star Tribune reports.

But that’s not always the case — discussion on social host laws sometimes brings up questions of how to prove responsibility and whether the ordinances may be too invasive into peoples’ homes.

“It’s been a controversial ordinance in other communities,” Philipp said.

But Rietz said the potential reward — saving the lives of young men and women who may endanger themselves by drinking — is worth any criticism.

“If you think of the consequences,” she said, “the argument (against) really diminishes.”