The announcement of a proposed 14,000 square foot Fine Wine
and Good Spirits Shop at 11th and Chestnut Streets got me thinking
once again how Pennsylvania needs
to get out of the liquor selling business. The proposed mega store is good news
to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) because the site will be in the
heart of the booming Center City
A heavy bulk
beverage business is already happening at the current, smaller PLCB store at 12th
and Chestnut, which the mega store will replace when it opens in the spring of
2016. At the 12th
Street store, it is not unusual to find empty
shelves of Chairman Selection and other wines of relatively high or medium
quality because restaurant scouts seem to buy them in bulk the minute they go
on sale. This means that individual customers are forced to purchase less
desirable or list price brands
PLCB officials
anticipate the additions of loading docks at the new 11th Street
mega store, so that restaurant scouts in SUV’s can back up and take out even
larger quantities of ‘on sale’ wine and spirits. This means more empty shelves
for the individual consumer. Quite clearly the emphasis is not on the
individual PLCB customer but on bulk purchases.
When I moved to the
Riverwards in 2002, I was within walking distance of a small wine and spirits
shop on Richmond Street .
This mini-store, despite its size, had a fairly good selection, as did another
mini store on Girard Avenue
near the 26th Police District Headquarters. Mini state stores like
this existed throughout many city neighborhoods so that, like a drop off Post
Office letter box, nobody was too far from the nearest booze outlet. This
changed when the PLCB began to think in bulk. The PLCB then began to
consolidate the mini stores into fancy mega stores that promised a better
selection of merchandise, regular wine and liquor tasting events and longer
hours of operation. While the mega store advocates tried to make these large
booze palaces sound as stylish as possible, the end result was that with the loss
of the mini stores most customers now had to travel greater distances to make a
purchase.
The presence of
PLCB-trained wine experts in French looking
aprons does not alleviate the pain of inconvenience when you need a bottle of
something at the last minute and have to travel across town to get it. While
the mini stores may have been ugly architecturally, at least they made a bad
system somewhat tolerable.
The sad fact is
that Pennsylvania is no further
along in eliminating state control of liquor sales then it was in 1936 after
the Johnstown Flood. Eliminating state control of wine and spirits is not
specifically a Republican or Democratic issue, although generally it is
conservative Republicans who want everything privatized, from the U.S. Post
Office to Social Security. State store privatization is the one privatization
that has been given the green light by many political progressives. The genesis
of the state store system, after all, is an outgrowth of Prohibition and it is
based on the principal that drinking is evil and sinful and needs government
regulation to keep it in check.
Frequent liquor
buyer Philadelphians often travel to Delaware and New Jersey when they shop for
wine and spirits because the prices are cheaper there, despite PLCB propaganda
that Pennsylvania prices are competitive. In New Jersey ’s
‘Total Wine’ store, for instance, you can buy fine wine for $3.99 a bottle.
Generally, vodka, spirits and wine are 19% cheaper in New
Jersey and 27% cheaper in Delaware .
Pennsylvanians are also subject to the outdated Johnstown Tax. The Johnstown
Tax began as an altruistic measure in 1936 after the infamous Johnstown
flood. At that time the Pennsylvania General Assembly put an emergency tax on
all alcohol, sans beer, sold in the state. Initially, the tax was conceived as
temporary and was scheduled to be eliminated after the flood damage was cleaned
up and after flood victims received adequate compensation. Six years after the flood, when Johnstown
was in full recovery, the tax was never repealed. In fact, politicians raised
the tax to 15% in 1963 and to 18% in 1968, where it remains today.
Where does the
Johnstown Tax money go today? It goes into a general “discretionary” fund for Pennsylvania
lawmakers. How’s that for an ambiguous cookie jar.
Why has no Pennsylvania
governor, even the so called grassroots ‘people’s governor,” Ed Rendell, worked
to repeal the Johnstown Tax?
Of course, whenever
there’s a state monopoly on something there’s bound to be trouble. Recently an
ex-PLCB official, a marketing director who had the power of determining which
wine and spirits products should be shelved, and which ones should be
discontinued, was charged with accepting bribes of golf outings, all-expense
paid trips, cash, meals, and sports tickets from distillers and wholesalers who
wished to boost their products or keep them shelved in PLCB stores.
The idea that one
person in the state has the power to decide which brands of wine and spirits
will stay put on store shelves is a little daunting to me.
When it comes to
the sale of beer, Pennsylvania is
far more liberal. The state does not run the beer business but it does control
the number of licenses for these stores. In fact, the Pennsylvania
beer tax is the 3rd lowest in the nation.
Why does beer get a
free ride? And why does wine, whose properties are extolled by scientists and
medical personnel as having amazing health benefits (sans abuse), put in the
same category as gin and vodka? Wine in many states is sold in convenience
stores, 7-11’s, at the local CVS , Target,
and in nearly all supermarkets.
After Governor
Wolf’s veto of the most recent liquor privatization bill, Representative Dayle
Heffley had this to say: “… Pennsylvania Utah Pennsylvania Pennsylvania
In the old days,
when you walked into a Philadelphia
state store you had to ask a guy behind the counter what you wanted. They had
state store catalogs with numbers; the customer would give the guy a number,
he'd disappear into the back and come back with the bottle. The operation was
run like a pawn shop. Not only that, but by law the guy behind the counter
couldn't give you any recommendations.
