...and "modernization." The Senate GOP got their chance at "doing nothing" two years ago when they torpedoed the House's last normalization bill. Now the other one's getting an outing; but just how
The Democrats are in a full court press against liquor normalization, from Governor Wolf -- "I will
veto the
bill if it reaches my desk in its current form." -- to Representative
Costa -- who puts his faith in the Governor's veto and one nebulous
"modernization" plan -- down to little Democrat wanna-be
Gene DiGirolamo,
the Republican representative from lower Bucks County, who's been
pathetically peddling his own "modernization" bill for two years, with
no serious takers.
It's too little too late for the House:
HB466 swiftly passed with a 114-87 vote on party lines (with
four spineless Republicans deserting their party). The Democrats and their union foot-soldiers see the writing on the wall, the writing that says "
30-20 Republican Senate majority,"
and they're nervous. They're talking tough, but they're relying
completely on two things at this point: the past (and unexplained)
reluctance of Senator
Chuck McIlhinney (R-Bucks) to let a normalization bill out of his Law and Justice Committee, and the
Governor's stated readiness to veto a bill..."in its
current form" (emphasis added to a word that gives him some wiggle room).
If the governor full-out
vetoes a passed bill, the Republicans on their own
don't have the votes for an override,
and they won't get any Democrats to go with them. That just won't
happen. So it's possible the Governor offers a deal to get what
he wants, and part of that deal may involve either
open debate of the "modernization plan, wherever that may go, or
incorporation of some of the modernization ideas into a
watered-down normalization bill.
That begs the question: what do the Democrats (and little Gene) mean by "modernization"?
As you might expect from the crew backing the
State Store System, it's a
retro kind of "modernization." Here's what the plans offer.
Sunday sales -- Expand Sunday sales to all State Stores, and extend the Sunday closing time from 5:00 to 10:00 although the majority of stores close at 9:00 other days. Hmmm, let's see...
so what? First,
there are already over 150 stores open on Sunday, and they're in the
most heavily populated areas, so not a huge impact. Second, and just to
be petty:
does this include the stores in places like Snow Shoe, and Clymer, and Knox that are only open three days a week now? The sad thing about this? It's the
most directly consumer-friendly part of the whole "modernization" proposal.
Direct shipment of wine -- Kinda depends on what you mean. Do you mean that wineries and importers would be able to ship directly to
you? Or
directly to the
State Store of your choice? (Wow, so convenient!) Because it depends on which
Democrat you talk to. And keep in mind that they want the wineries to
pay a hefty fee and do a ton of paperwork to support it and to tell them who bought what and how much; there's a limit of 9 liters/12 bottles a
year (one case and you're done). Then you'll have to pay shipping, and...this really only affects a small number of high-end wine buyers. This one
sounds
good, but it's going to be
bait-and-switch.
Wine and beer sales in grocery stores; cafe licenses and "store-in-store"
-- A proposal to expand wine sales to grocery stores that have bought
an R license to sell beer (with the stipulations that they must open a
30 seat cafe and ring up the booze separately from any food purchases...and limits on how many bottles they can sell at one time).
This is not modernization, it's
something the stores thought up, and are
paying through the nose for because
the state won't adjust the Almighty Liquor Code to allow it to happen
without buying up an expensive bar license. (No one's said whether
regular taverns will be able to sell wine, either.) If they DO expand
the Code to allow wine sales by the bottle, they will make sure that the
price isn't competitive with the State Stores. Count on that.
Then there's the bright idea to
expand the "store-in-store" program, which puts a State Store under the same roof as the grocery store. Well,
hooray. Fact is, "store-in-store" has been available since 1981, and since the big co-location push began in 2003
most supermarkets just aren't interested (read the sad story
here).
Bringing it up only sounds new because very few Pennsylvanians
have
ever seen one of these sorry things, or realized that it was
particularly convenient when they did; after all, it's
just a State Store that
has a door that opens
into a supermarket. Then there's DiGirolamo's
idea, which is to put a free-standing
400 square foot "mini-State Store"
with a limited selection of wine in grocery stores.
It sounds like a wine kiosk, only there's
always a clerk there, not just when it
breaks down...well, okay,
you're right, that
was pretty much always. This isn't
modernization, this isn't even a new idea. It's an
old idea that
already hasn't worked.
Extended hours -- First they tell us when private stores come in,
people can buy booze at all hours of the night, and that leads to
crime. Now they tell us they want to stay open later.
You figure it out.
 |
Sen. Costa illustrates how much prices could be increased
(or maybe he's ordering a Subway foot-long) |
Price flexibility -- This is beautiful. Currently, the State
Stores work on a regulated markup: every price is set to go up by 30% of
the wholesale price (plus taxes and fees).
They want to change this to allow the State Stores to
set the margins as they see fit, "up or down," on different products. Given that the System's operating costs
just keep increasing as a percentage of total revenue, how long will it be before
all the margins are going
up? (Keep in mind,
increasing the overall margin was suggested to the Board as a way to
"counter higher expenses" just last year by the PLCB's finance director.) Consumer-friendly?
This is PLCB-friendly, it does
nothing for you.
"Upgraded procurement guidelines" -- What does this even mean? Do you think it will be good for you? Do you think it's
modern?
Personnel hiring outside the Civil Service system -- Yeah, that's
modernization: the Civil Service
rules are the only thing keeping the PLCB from being a
complete patronage pit. They
say they need it to hire people who know wines and spirits and promote
people for product knowledge (then on another day, they'll insist that
all of their employees are
already wine experts and highly trained).
Increased licensing fees -- Charge bars and restaurants and beer
distributors
more to sell booze on the license they
already have; charge them more to sell
six-packs, charge them more to be open on Sunday, charge them more to
sell both wine and beer. This isn't any kind of 'modernization,' this is
charging everyone more for drinks in order to cover the
PLCB's steadily increasing operating expenses.
Customer loyalty programs -- Because
everyone has been asking for coupons and a PLCB "shoppers card." Haven't you asked for that? Isn't that modern?
Expedited review of leases -- Right. So they can
move the stores around more without any input from the local community. More
top-down Soviet-style planned economy crap. That's not "modern," that's 1950s-era thinking.
Enter into a buying consortium with other control states -- To
lower prices. Really? If they get this and the price flexibility,
they'll pay less to producers, they'll charge us the same amount as
before or more, and -- you got it --
their operating costs will keep going up. And will selection improve?
Never.
Self-service lottery ticket sales in State Stores -- This isn't "modernization." This is simply taking lottery sales and fees
away from actual businesses, supermarkets and convenience stores. Next they'll want to sell
snacks and cigarettes. The State Store bureaucracy apparently just doesn't like independent businesses. (They don't really like
you, either; State Store employees refer to you as a "chronic alcohol user." Did you know that?)
That's it?
That's "modernization"? Yup. Does it address the real concerns? No. There is:
- Nothing about more stores than the current bizarrely low number of about 610, when the average for a state our size and population would be, at the least, over 2,400 (but those increased operating costs mean more stores would utterly bankrupt the system)
- nothing about better selection in the stores (because they don't even know how to sell what they already have)
- nothing about taking down the insulting police-enforced monopoly that makes buying a bottle of wine in New Jersey a crime (there's been talk recently, sure, but the Legislature's been talking about getting rid of the case law for over 20 years)
- nothing about delivery to licensees (did you know that? Bars and restaurants have to go to the PLCB to pick up their booze, because the state agency can't be bothered to deliver it. Good thing, probably, because the increased operating costs would be huge! Forget the fact that private beer wholesalers somehow manage to do it...)
- nothing about breaking the case law (because they don't want to upset the beer business, which has been such a friend to them by killing normalization in 2012 UPDATE: Senator Brewster's latest modernization plan DOES contain language about lowering the case limit. You'll have to buy his whole bill to get it...)
- nothing about allowing any supermarket to sell wine and beer (without buying a scarce tavern license and adding a "cafe", something small family-owned stores simply can't afford to do)
- nothing about beer sales at convenience stores, drug stores, gas stations (that's so scary)
- nothing about how to even get this crappy system up to the level of New Hampshire's control stores
- nothing about fixing our crappy booze tax system (which currently makes cheap booze cheaper and expensive booze more so; just the thing to "control" consumption)
- nothing about improving service, which continues to elude them; at least, it does in all the stores we've gone into recently.
Nothing, in short,
of any real value to the consumer. Modernization is a
lie, a shiny glittering lie, just like a fishing lure, and the
hook hidden inside is that it's an
excuse to keep this creaking relic alive for ten more years without
threat of normalization while we '
give modernization a chance to
work.' But it won't. They don't even know
what's really wrong with this horrible mistake of a retail system, which is why they can't fix it. They want to "modernize" it?
They've had 80 years! How many more chances do they deserve? Governor Wolf says he's a businessman?
MAKE IT A BUSINESS, many private businesses. It's not even radical; it's
normal, just look at any and everything else you buy.
Normalization is modernization. Accept no substitutes.
*We're considering a change here. Changing the state's current monopoly on wholesale/retail liquor and wine sales is something both liberals and conservatives are in favor of, but calling it "privatization" gives its opponents a wedge to split off liberals who don't like the idea of privatizing more legitimate functions of government, like roads, schools, prisons. We'd use 'modernization,' but... We're going to try the word "normalization," given the fact that selling wine and liquor in privately-owned stores IS normal
in the majority of the U.S. (yes, even in most of the "control states") and the world
. We offer this idea for the supporters of real change to use.
