The Circle Game

The Tribune-Review ran this piece today with this stunning headline (be prepared for a shocker):

Reform at Liquor Control Board awash in politics 

Say it ain't so!


"A lot of people like that reform. Maybe we should get us some."

Thanx for the bux, suckers!

And where there's liquor, and politics, and a notable need for reform...there must be Joe "Da ex-CEO" Conti. In this case, it's his job: CEO of the PLCB. Given that the PLCB doesn't even have the required three members on the board (another ethics-challenged blast from the past: it's PJ "Call Me PJ" Stapleton's empty slot that hasn't been filled), and it doesn't look like they're going to be filled anytime soon (since the dysfunctional Senate is now ignoring the Governor's second nominee for the position), really? Why the hell do we need to start paying another political hack $156,700 a year? 

Without it, supporters say, the agency loses a level of professional management and efficiency only possible with a full-time chief executive.

It is to weep. Joe Conti, the embodiment of "professional management and efficiency." Well, look, if I have to remind you...just read the Litany of Conti here. Wow, just can't wait to get someone else in there to get things popping again!

Eventually, the piece comes around to privatization. "A proposal by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware County, to phase out state stores and expand where beer, wine and liquor could be sold would recast the chief executive position as an “executive director."" I must have missed this proposal, but that doesn't surprise me; there was a lot going on behind the scenes.

Hey, Norm! What's up with that?

So is this proposal still in play for the September session? It must be, since Senator Jim "Sheetz-Damning" Ferlo is still bad-mouthing it.

“I think the Pileggi model was to micromanage,” Ferlo said. “There's a way for the... Legislature to have oversight, and that's through our appropriations.”

Yeah, except you don't make appropriations for the PLCB, Senator; they have their own sources of revenue (and their own cops, and their own courts, and their own grievance system (it's on page 8)). They don't need you, which is why they ignore you and all of us...until we want privatization. And then they prostrate themselves and suddenly service and selection gets better...until the threat of privatization goes away.

Mark my words: if privatization fails in this legislative session, the State Stores will slowly slide back to Suckville. And then in 10 or 15 years, we'll go through this whole charade again, and someone will call for privatization, and service and selection at the State Stores will remarkably improve...till the proposal fails, and around it goes again. How long do you want to keep playing this stupid game?

PRIVATIZATION IS MODERNIZATION. Accept no substitutes.

Why the PLCB's "Modernization" plan is misleading

The PLCB keeps telling us that they want to "modernize" their stores; the unions involved (the UFCW and ISSU) tell us the same thing; the Democratic legislators who dance merrily (in lockstep) to their tune put forth "modernization" proposals. But take a look at what they tell you, and wonder...if this stuff is so great...why aren't they already doing it?

What do we want? More convenience.
The PLCB Partisans offer this:

We can open more stores.
The PLCB already controls how many stores are open. There were 692 in 2000, there are 596 now. Neither the house or the senate had to vote to change that. They can open more stores any time they want to. They haven't, they've closed stores. Why? Probably because of their bulging overhead costs and mismanagement.

We can make shopping more convenient by putting more "stores in stores," State Stores in or beside grocery stores and beer distributors.
Not one of the new Fine Wine and Good Spirits Stores are "in a store" and none being built at this moment are either. Once again: if they can do it...why aren't they doing it now?

We can increase the hours.
Except for Sunday sales, which would require an act of the Legislature, the PLCB can set the hours for all stores now. If they wanted to be open 8AM-11PM, they could be. They obviously don't.


What does the Legislature want from the PLCB? More MONEY.
The PLCB Partisans offer this:

We can and have reduced costs to make more money for the state.
In the free market, reduced costs mean lower prices for the consumer; see Walmart as an example. I haven't seen it at the State Stores, have you? You come last at the PLCB.

We will turn in a record amount of money to the general fund this year.
It's juggling. Next year, when they bring inventory back up to normal, hire the 400 people that they purposely didn't hire this year to make the numbers look good and pay for new stores at a faster rate than the current 100 year completion schedule, it will go back down to historical percentages or lower. But by then the privatization scare will be over, so they don't care about next year.


What do we really want? A chance to buy in great stores like they have in other states: a choice.
The PLCB Partisans tell us: The PLCB is "a world-class shopping experience...akin to Williams-Sonoma."
 You don't become "world class" simply by saying you are "world class." You do it by working hard, exceeding expectations in selection, customer service, and meeting customers needs and wants...and then being judged "world class" by independent experts in your field. Even the ISSU, the Independent State Store Union, which represents the stores' managers, calls it "their delusional effort as a wannabe 'world class retailer'".(ISSU press release, Dec. 9, 2011)


As we saw with the wine kiosks, the PLCB knows nothing about "modernization." In fact, expecting an agency that came up with such a clunky idea as the wine kiosks to offer sound ideas on "modernization" is like asking your dog for advice on how to fix your car.

Remember, folks: Privatization IS Modernization. We don't need to "modernize" the PLCB; we need to put it out to pasture where it belongs.

Thanks to Albert Brooks for the core ideas of this post.

What Rough Beast...

The Second Coming

W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Harrisburg to be born?

 

A twisted, disfigured privatization bill is limping toward the finish line in the Senate as I write this, at 1:30 AM on Saturday morning. I'm listening to the Democrats' last-ditch efforts as amendments are offered. Senator Teplitz is admitting that the PLCB is corrupt and stupid, but thinks it should be retained. I believe he undercuts his argument...but it's futile. He's speaking in favor of "The Ferlo Amendment." That's the Democrats' "modernization" scheme, which really stands for more of the same...only now open on Sundays (although Ferlo's amendment DID have better "package reform;" the Republicans have ludicrously made The Case Law even MORE complicated). 

 

This bill is ridiculous in its pointless compromise. If it passes, we will still be a laughingstock among civilized states. Unnecessarily arbitrary compromises stud it like chunks of coal in a pudding. This has become a coddling of Big Beer, and a crusade against Corbett. It will be decided on party lines, for reasons having very little to do with the merits of the bill.

 

And you know what? I'll take this Second Coming of private alcohol sales in the Commonwealth. Because once the wall is broken, it cannot be repaired. It can only be further torn down as people realize how stupid it was to begin with. The predictions of disaster will come to naught.

 

Ferlo's amendment was defeated, narrowly, with one Republican -- Greenleaf, of Montgomery County -- voting for it. The bill has been amended, with a vote of 27 Republicans in favor of the Pileggi amendment, an augury of success in the Appropriations Committee, after which it will return to the Senate for final passage and reconciliation with the House...which could be tricky. But another step goes forward; the slouching continues. The senators are calling it a night, and so am I.

 

Details...Why So Late, Senator?

In the wake of yesterday's endorsement of SB100 (such as it is; I'm just a blogger, fergodssake), I have to bring up this: why did it take so stinking long?

Here we are, shoved up against the legislative deadline, with only 10 days to get this bill out of committee (which is apparently achieved but not voted), passed in the Senate (and we've already been told that the votes are not in place yet), reconciled in the House (where Rep. Turzai is not happy with the loss of wholesale privatization, and who would be?), and then signed by the Governor (which should be a slamdunk; he's not going to veto a privatization bill, and I assume he's going to have input before it gets to his desk). Now, the Gov has already said he was prepared to stick around for as long as it takes to get a budget passed, so the session may not actually be OVER on July 1...but let's stick to the official calendar for now. Why did it take so long?

I can tell you in one word: McIlhinney. Senator Charles T. "Chuck" McIlhinney is the majority chair of the Senate Law & Justice Committee, the committee that oversees the PLCB in the Senate, and he got House Bill 790, the liquor privatization bill, way back in mid-March...when he promptly -- promptly -- announced that he was going to hold hearings on the bill. Hearings that the House Republicans were excoriated for not holding...by the Democrats and the union, who knew that hearings would delay, delay, delay, and do nothing to change ANY Democratic votes -- their party discipline on this has been impressive, stoked by the hopes of a Corbett defeat and continuing union-donated campaign cash -- and likely not change any Republican votes. 

Why not? Let's face it: this issue has been around for 40 years. If you're a Pennsylvania legislator and you don't know about this issue and have an opinion, you're incompetent and should be voted out. The hearings would be an opportunity for two things: delay and bloviating. McIlhinney supplied the delay -- spreading the hearings out over six weeks -- and the Democrats, led by Senator Jim Ferlo and the UFCW's jeering yellow-shirted shlock troops, supplied the bloviation, which McIlhinney was all too ready to allow.

Meanwhile, the hearings were blatantly stacked. The first hearing was all "beware the harms of alcohol" people, who could be guaranteed to be against any kind of liberalization of alcohol policy, regardless of facts. Well, okay, we thought, that's out of the way. 

But then the second hearing was almost as bad! Representatives from Wegmans and Redner's supermarkets appeared to ask for beer in the markets (the guy from Redner's made an excellent point that the cafe requirement was slanted against smaller stores), the main desire of the citizens who only want normalcy (don't hold your breath: you ain't getting it). But after Senator Williams asked them about their "diversity plan" (sure, be good to have, but what's it got to do with the issue? And how many beer distributors have one?) and McIlhinney had brushed them aside (essentially saying, yeah, that's what you'd like, but that's not how it's going to be), it was the Pro-PLCB Express again, with the MBDA saying 'You will utterly destroy 1,400 small family businesses if you don't leave things exactly the way they are!' (paraphrasing) and the president of Philly-based Charles Jacquin Liquor Co., who said "We love the PLCB!" (actual quote, and of course he does: they sell most of their bargain-style booze here and never have to spend a dime on sales because the PLCB carries all of it at cheap prices. A marriage made in Purgatory (though mind you, I don't mind a dose of Rock 'n' Rye occasionally in the winter...)), the tavern owners (who essentially said the same thing the MBDA did: don't rock the boat, we're making good money here), and a Pennsylvania winery that's managed to get in the State Stores and...you guessed it, doesn't want to rock the boat.

The third hearing lost control. The beer wholesalers got a chance to plea for no boat-rocking. There was a moment of opposition, beautifully presented by the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers and DISCUS, and they held their ground well against Senator Ferlo and his minions. But then we got three hours of straight "The PLCB is the most amazing thing since fire!" from direct stakeholders like the unions, one of the three companies that gets paid to haul the PLCB's wholesale business (not the one that's owned by Attorney General Kane's husband, oddly enough...), and the PLCB themselves (classic moment: McIlhinney says to them, the guy from DISCUS says you can't handle wholesale for 14,000 businesses (when everyone knows they can barely handle wholesale for their own 596 stores). Can you? Oh, you bet, says the PLCB guy, with a straight face. Wonder what the tavern owners had to say about that?).

Then the Lieutenant-Governor finally gets to speak, with almost no time left, and Ferlo heaps derision on him, and the State Police commissioner, while the yellow-shirted union reps cheered, booed, and cackled. It was, as veteran political reporter Brad Bumsted put it, "unlike any committee hearing I've seen in more than three decades." And in case you think I'm exaggerating about Ferlo and the union, he also said: "Cawley and his panel, including Col. Frank Noonan, commissioner of the state police, and Secretary of Health Michael Wolf, were verbally thrashed by Sen. Jim Ferlo" and "[the state store clerks] cheered wildly for Ferlo and, not surprisingly, hooted and jeered at Cawley."He then described McIlhinney's belated call for order as "laughable."

It was a terribly cynical exercise, but do you know what the worst thing was? Not one single consumer was heard from. Not one of the people who actually have to deal with this system. The Legislature didn't want to hear from the civilians, the citizens...the voters. Why start now? They haven't wanted to hear what we've had to say about the State Stores for over 40 years!

If McIlhinney was going to schedule such a circus, a pro-PLCB parade, he could have done it in a week. All these people gave what are stock speeches; the slavishly pro-labor academic Dr. Ron Zullo delivered essentially the same speech he did at last year's hearing. There's no excuse for taking six weeks...unless you wanted to delay a vote, to jam this up against the deadline so hard that it didn't really matter what you came out with, it would be too late to get it through.

Don't believe me? Then tell me why, if the last non-meaningful hearing was over two weeks ago, McIlhinney only announced his "plan" on Tuesday...and still has not actually released a bill for examination? More delay. We read today that his committee won't be considering the bill till next week. The last week of the session.

Because of McIlhinney's delaying tactics, we now have this lump of a bill. I'll support it, and urge its passage, because it's all we have time for. We won't be able to get a good law, because the Senator successfully wasted the time he had. 

Would HB790 have passed the Senate? Probably not. And McIlhinney's deliberate delays ensured that we would get this mishmosh instead. But if we don't pass this, it's going to be ten years till we get another chance to get this ludicrous relic off our backs. Thanks, Senator. I sure do hope the Republican Party remembers what you did to them when election time comes around.