But Everyone Else Is Doing It: The Uphill Fight for Liquor Privatization in Pennsylvania
By: TIM KELLY
Would you jump off a bridge just because everyone else is doing so? For decades wooden spoon-wielding mothers decided that this motto should mean something to us as children.
Today, some opponents of wine and spirit privatization in Pennsylvania have taken up a similarly impotent slogan: “Why would we want to be like the 48 other states?”
Pennsylvania is one of only two states in the union that has complete control over all wholesale and retail sale of wine and liquor. This is due largely to temperance lobbying prior to the adoption of prohibition. For you history buffs, prohibition was repealed in 1933! Yet here we are in Pennsylvania, 80 years later, chilling our beer in a wooden icebox instead of the Sub-Zeroes nearly every other state has installed.
The point is this: bringing Pennsylvania’s antiquated liquor laws into the 21st century through privatization will not only provide more choice and better convenience for consumers, it will also supply a significant economic boon to our struggling state economy. The estimated revenue Pennsylvania loses as a result of consumers crossing state lines to purchase alcohol in Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware alone approaches a staggering $80 million per year.
And not only do Pennsylvania families win when government steps away from the booze business, recent data backs up strong public sentiment for a privately managed system.
A January 2013 survey conducted by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz and Associates (FM3), solidly supports public demand for privatizing alcohol control in Pennsylvania.
Overall, 6 in 10 surveyed favor the governor’s proposal to end government sale and distribution of wine and spirits in the commonwealth. According to the FM3 data, nearly every constituency included in the survey supports ending the current system.
Pluralities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents favor ending state control. And both men and women favor ending state control by far wider margins than each gender opposes it.
Even union households, according to FM3’s survey, are in lockstep with their non-union counterparts in supporting legislation to privatize wine and spirit sales in Pennsylvania.
Survey participants named, in their own words, advantages to ending government control. These included: less government regulation, convenience, success seen in other states, increased competition, and increased revenue to local economies to name only a few.
The governor’s privatization plan allows the owners of supermarkets, drug stores, restaurants, and big-box stores to purchase a separate license to sell beer and wine. Convenience store owners will be eligible to sell beer and the state’s licensed beer distributors will be able to bid for licenses to sell wine and spirits.
The governor’s plan also approximately doubles the number of wine and spirits stores in Pennsylvania, opening new and wider streams of state revenue.
Better yet, the plan will take shelf-stocking decisions away from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) – the body that currently oversees what brands do and do not make it to our stores.
This windfall of consumer choice is very clearly not the standard today in Pennsylvania. In fact, only months ago it was discovered that the PLCB has gone into the wine and vodka-making business, launching 36 products to compete against private sector brands that have bid and won shelf space in wine and spirits stores across the state.
To add insult to injury, the state spent nearly a half-million taxpayer dollars last year on a campaign to promote these products. The PLCB has a complete monopoly on alcohol sales in Pennsylvania.
How would you describe leveraging taxpayer dollars to promote a government-owned product that competes against privately owned in-state and out-of-state wine and spirits companies?
Some have described it as the PLCB picking winners and losers. That’s probably a kind assessment considering that the government ignored the free market and chose itself as the winner.
The opponents of privatization are correct to imply that Pennsylvania should not change the way we do things because our neighbors have. We’re not like every other state in the country. Our traditions are our own and our people hold fast to principles such as hard work, resiliency, and integrity.
However it’s never been clearer that in order to preserve these great Pennsylvania values and protect the free-market spirit that makes our democracy great, it’s time that the sale, control, and oversight of alcohol in Pennsylvania are just like everyone else.