Liquor must be privatized
Notice: Undefined variable: article_ad_placement3 in /usr/web/cs-washington.ogdennews.com/wp-content/themes/News_Core_2023_WashCluster/single.php on line 128
I would like to respond to the July 13 letter by Barry L. Andrews of the Washington-Greene Central Labor Council outlining his opposition to the privatization of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Andrews’ concern for employees is to be applauded. He may very well be correct on many levels. My question might be, however, with the vast experience of these employees, might they be valuable within a private system?
I am a licensee and very much support the privatization of the PLCB. Why in the world is the state government involved in a for-profit enterprise in the first place? And since it is, let’s face it, it’s a bureaucracy of huge proportion. It is bogged down in red tape, antiquated systems, lack of selection, many poor employees, high prices and monopolization.
By the time the state is through with a $10 bottle of wine, with a 30 percent mark-up, an 18 percent Johnstown Flood Tax imposed in 1936, and other costs, the bottle of wine costs $19.30, a 90 percent increase. Licensees like me get a whopping 10 percent wholesale discount, but we purchase 30 percent of the wine and spirits in the state. A normal wholesale relationship in the private sphere is 20 percent to 35 percent in most businesses.
Because of the poor selection in most state stores, licensees purchase a lot of wine through a broker. The broker passes the paper work through the state, the product gets approved and the broker then delivers the product to the store and then the licensee pays the store for the product and picks it up. It’s a ludicrous system that prices many products out of consumers’ reach. Many wineries refuse to deal with Pennsylvania due to this monopoly and ridiculous government-controlled system. Even though there are some very good people in charge of the PLCB these days, fighting hard to improve the agency, and many stores do have good employees, the system is just too broken and ill-conceived, and must become part of the free market system.
Michael Passalacqua
North Franklin Township
Passalacqua is the owner of Angelo’s Restaurant.