The PLCB. A failure of an idea and the beginning of a fiefdom.

Sometime in December of 1933, then Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot sat down to write an editorial piece for the Rotarian magazine [you can read it, starting in page 12*]. He laid out his reasons for "The Pennsylvania Plan," his reasons why he felt that the government had to restrict alcohol for the citizens, because they couldn't control themselves. Let's look at the points he made in The Pennsylvania Plan, and see if Pennsylvania needed them then...and if we have any need of them now.

Pinchot said that Pennsylvania's liquor control legislation is dependent on five cardinal points.

1. The saloon must not be allowed to come back.
2. Liquor must be kept entirely out of Politics.
3. Judges must not be forced into Liquor politics.
4. Liquor must not be sold without restraint.
5. Bootlegging must be made unprofitable.

Ardent environmentalist; ardent prohibitionist

After a quick look, you might conclude that all of his points have failed except #4. (We do our own bootlegging these days, thanks to the big liquor stores on the New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland borders.) However, during the 85 years since Repeal, the meaning of the language in some of the points has changed.

Take point #1: saloons pre-Prohibition were in a large part controlled by the brewers. Prices were kept low, so demand was high. There were enticements like free food or snacks for those buying beer, which is why you see strangely detailed happy hour laws about how much food can be given away, and what kind. Bars were "tied" to the brewer that backed them; the only way you could get a Miller instead of a Bud, for instance, was to go to another bar. The corruption this caused, both in business and in politics from the free-flowing graft money produced, was one of the big drivers for Prohibition. 

That all changed with the three tier system in place in Pennsylvania (and most of the United States) today. That created three defined "tiers:" producer/brewer, wholesaler, and retailer, and forbid owners of one tier from owning businesses in the other two. No "tied houses." So did the saloon come back? Yes, but not in the same way, and that hasn't been all bad for the consumer. We'll call this point a draw.

In point #2, Pinchot was talking about patronage, the "spoils system," in which state jobs were handed out as political favors. He's already planning the huge jobs program of the State Store System of Stores. Point #2 meant that employees would be selected based on skills testing instead of loyalty testing; who they knew and the favors they could do. This was mostly true for the rank and file store workers, not so much for the managers, and not at all for the Board who have all been political hacks, cronies, and lawyerly hangers-on since day one.

He also thought that this new system would keep politicians from buying votes with booze, and thus fall under the control of distilleries and brewers. Did that work? Hard to say, because how people drank changed during the Depression. More drank at home after Repeal, because they could buy at a local store instead of having to go out to a speakeasy or club. This all changed again once the stores were unionized. Now the money flowed from union coffers into politician's pockets to buy votes to keep this archaic system alive. Although the jobs are still subject to civil service rules -- despite recent efforts to change this, under the guise of "improvement" -- overall this has failed.

Money, money, money, moooooney...

Point #3 is keeping the dollars, booze and votes away from judges and their decisions. Now we have judges working for the the PLCB...well, mostly 'working.'  I wonder what Gifford would say about that. This has worked, but largely because judges working on booze have been ring-fenced, as the British say.

Point #4 was probably true for the first 70 years of the State Store System of Stores -- ah, fond memories of the completely customer-unfriendly counter stores! -- but no longer. When the board that was put in place to control drinking is now advertising, having sales, sponsoring fests of various kinds, even trying to sell booze by robot! -- you can say that the restraint is limited at best.

Point 5 is pretty much irrelevant. As we said, bootlegging went from criminal enterprise to an everyday crime cheerfully "committed" by private citizens. Governor Pinchot thought that the state would be able to sell alcohol for less than the bootleggers, and they mostly did. But the power of the police-enforced monopoly and pure greed kept them from selling wine and spirits for less than the border states, which made them complicit in making criminals of everyday citizens.

Governor Pinchot was a leader in the Dry movement and was a teetotaler himself.  He really thought that his plan would have "support of the vast majority of the citizens of Pennsylvania."  But he never actually let the people decide, and as we all know, there has never been a single scientific poll that showed the citizens to be in favor of the State Store System of Stores.

Looking back to what was envisioned by Pinchot, you can see how corrupt the plan became over time. Millions of dollars were "...to be made available to school districts to help schools that were in danger of being closed." Even if we sucked out every penny possible from the PLCB now, it would only be about $90 for every taxpayer** this year. That's certainly not a rate the PLCB could keep up, and not really enough to notice in my almost $5,000 tax bill. Pinchot also suggested that if an item wasn't available the system "would have to get it." Still failing at that one 85 years later. And don't forget: there were THREE TIMES as many licenses available back then as now. Where did we go so wrong, Gifford? A commonwealth turns its thirsty eyes to you.

Unfortunately, not everything he proposed went...wrong. The Governor said that "Whisky will be sold by civil service employees with exactly the same amount of salesmanship as is displayed by an automatic postage stamp vending machine." Sure enough, that is exactly what we have in almost every transaction! He also said that there will be no artificial stimulation of the demand for liquor. No PLCB sponsoring a flower show trying to get women to drink, no staying open longer for hunting season, no bottle signings by third rate celebrities.

As a naturalist, Gifford Pinchot was probably second only to Teddy Roosevelt in public service. (He was the first professional forester in America.) His main fault was that he never actually wanted to know what the citizens thought of his Pennsylvania Plan, because he thought he knew what was best for the masses.

And that is the thing about the PLCB and the Almighty Liquor Code that has changed the least.



*If you get the chance, read the "Regulated Licenses, Retail Plan" by Frank J. Loesch on page 14.

** 10.1 M adults, 68.6% are homeowners, ~90% of them pay some property tax

Does anyone at the PLCB know what the word "monopoly" means?

Great story in today's Harrisburg Patriot-News about the PLCB's latest bizarre "Stalinism with a happy face" idea. The PLCB is spending $3.6 million (I hope I don't have to remind you where they got it...) to get guidance on public image, advertising, and store layout. They've contracted with Landor Associates, a San Francisco-based "branding" firm that advises Microsoft, Pepsi, and Levi's, according to the story.

The PLCB is coming off a record year: $1.7 billion in sales, up 7.2% from the previous year. More to the point, the PLCB is a monopoly. They don't need a public image, they're the only damned game in town. If they want you to buy more booze, they're directly contradicting their other main mission: controlling how much booze you buy. And finally, I don't care if Ed Rendell told PLCB chairman Stapleton "Run this place like a business, not a government bureaucracy," it's not a business, it is a government bureaucracy.

That's the whole problem. We don't need the State to be selling liquor and wine, telling us what we can buy and can't buy, where we can buy it, when we can buy it. The State doesn't tell us where to buy gasoline, or jewelry, or guns, or cans of tuna. Prohibition is over, and it's not coming back. The State Store system doesn't make sense for any of the original reasons given for its creation.

So stop spending our money to make this ridiculous proposition more palatable. Spend the money on a plan for a smooth transition to privatization.

I've been saying this for years...

I remember the first time I bought booze from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, the PLCB.

I went to the State Store on N. Queen Street in Lancaster. I was 21, and a junior at Franklin & Marshall College. The store was a counter fronted on a small area; standing only, no seats, no coatrack, nothing. It looked like a methadone clinic: come in, get your prescription, get out. I picked up the PLCB catalog and ran my finger down the list of vodkas. I went up to the counter and pointed to my selection, and said the number of the selection -- only the number, not the name, please -- to the clerk. He went into the shelves, and brought back my bottle of Smirnoff. He didn't ask for my ID, just my money. I paid him.

I remember the second time I bought booze. I got in a friend's car and we drove down Rt. 222 to Conowingo, Maryland, where we bought two cases of liquor. We went and got steamed crabs, then drove home by a different route, laughing all the way at the lower prices, huge selection, and friendly service we'd found. I had already decided that if this was how Pennsylvania was going to force me to buy booze, I'd break the law to avoid it.

After almost 30 years, I've thought of lots of reasons why the PLCB is a bad idea, why it should be abolished in the favor of privately-owned retail stores -- the way it is done in most states -- and why it seems impossible that this will ever happen. I'm starting this blog to present them, in hopes that it may, in some small way, help move Pennsylvania towards the day when we turn our backs on this relic of Repeal.

The State Stores have improved since I bought that bottle of Smirnoff -- they're called Wine & Spirits Stores now, they're open on Sundays, and they actually have aisles -- but they're still ridiculous. The system is ridiculous. The state has taken over an entire segment of retail -- wine and liquor sales -- and reserved it to themselves. "We will sell these products," they say, "and only us. We will control those sales, because only we have the power and responsibility to sell to the right people, and collect the taxes properly. If we did not control these sales, surely chaos and criminality would result."

Well, okay, I made that up. What they actually say is this:

Overview of the PLCB
This overview describes how the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) carries out its mission, presents a history of the PLCB, and provides information about each of the Board's major organizational entities. The overview also includes many facts and figures which demonstrate the major contribution that the PLCB makes to Pennsylvania's economy.

We are currently in the process of updating this document.

So...nothing. Let me take a whack at it. The PLCB exists because at the time of Repeal, Pennsylvania had a governor, Gifford Pinchot, who still ardently believed in Prohibition, and a legislature that believed Repeal may well be temporary and that Prohibition was still a strong political force -- to be fair, a belief that was prevalent in the day. Few people knew that Prohibition as a political force was deader than a doornail, in a state of complete collapse.

Working with what they knew, Pennsylvania's legislators put together a "control" system that was actually fairly common among states. They would control all sales of wine and liquor (note that beer was not included) through state-run stores. The clerks would simply deliver the bottle; they would not make recommendations of any one brand over another, a policy rooted in a brute force approach to fairness that would unfortunately lead to a total lack of any kind of service mentality. "We got it, you want it: play by our rules or get lost" was the attitude that ruled in the State Stores, and largely still does, despite the recent development of a human face.

The PLCB justifies itself by the revenues it brings in, by the supposition that it 'controls' abusive and underage drinking better than privately-owned businesses would, and by the money it "infuses" into the state economy by paying landlords for leases on the stores and the wages it pays its employees. It is a system that works so well that Pennsylvania is surrounded by great liquor stores across its borders.

I say we take it down.