Gov. Chris Gregoire doesn’t seem so thrilled with the prospect of privatizing liquor sales in Washington. First of all, while proponents are attempting to use our current budget crisis as an argument for privatization, Gregoire rightly points out that the auditor’s report doesn’t show the state raising an additional dime in the short term. And second of all…
“This idea that we go the way of auctioning off, like West Virginia, let’s be clear, you’ll get rid of all your mom and pops,” she said. “You’ll have what they have, which is Rite Aid sells all liquor, is that what you want in Washington state? We contract out now, we contract out to mom and pops in rural areas. What does the auction get you, once every 10 years, possibly a couple hundred million dollars, if you sell high? Now, West Virginia, not that I’m very proud of this, doesn’t sell as much liquor as we do. So you’d better sell more to make up if you’re going to auction off, I’m not sure that’s good policy. You look at our minor consumption sales – we’re well below any state that has it privatized, by like 10 percent. You need to understand it doesn’t help you this biennium at all. Number two, does it really get you any money in the long haul, and number three what are the social policy issues that are implicated here and is that the right direction?”
Washington, like most state store states, not only has lower per capita liquor consumption than the national average, it also has a lower incidence of alcohol related social and health problems. The only way that privatization can significantly increase state revenues is by significantly increasing sales, and with it, the related social costs. So the revenue argument strikes me as awfully cynical.
But I also wonder if the recent interest in eliminating our state store system doesn’t have anything to do with recent legislative proposals to legalize marijuana and sell it through our state stores? We currently have all the infrastructure in place to buy, distribute and resell marijuana in a well-managed and well-controlled system. Dismantling this infrastructure would make it that much harder to implement legalization.
Hmm.
Two things occur to me-
First, for a former attorney the English skills the governer uses are very disappointing. How did she win cases when she can’t speak English fluently?
But that aside this quote can be questioned. “The only way that privatization can significantly increase state revenues is by significantly increasing sales.” Well, not really. Privately sold liquor would be sold mostly from existing stores. The costs of maintaining a retail outlet and staffing it would be sharply curtailed. I have no doubt that liquor consumption would bump a bit if privatized, if for no other reason than convenience of purchase. At my house in Italy I can buy a bottle at a coffee shop or mini-mart but don’t see huge social harms from that practice.
For your last point, given her disjointed and badly phrased speech quoted above I don’t think the governer is capable of that level of planning.
Works fine now.
Why would the R’s be so anti-small business? Why put in another layer of bureaucracy for me to buy a bottle of Absinthe?
And, I agree with Goldy, it helps should we legalize marijuana. We have a controlled distribution system in place right now.
I’ve lived in this state for 40 years, and this debate was going on back then and has continually gone on ever since.
Privatizing retail liquor sales has nothing to do with boosting state revenues. These campaigns are always waged by private interests who want to put the state’s liquor profits in their own pockets.
@1 ” … for a former attorney the English skills … ”
You’ve obviously never read a legal memorandum or brief. Gregoire’s syntax you see here is typical of how lawyers write. They murder the king’s English. Why courts put up with it is beyond me.
Maybe puddy should have gone to law school. He can write in gibberish.
I’ve been posting on HA all night and all morning, and I just took a 2-minute break to check my stocks, and I’ve made $1,350 today while sitting on my furry butt — and it’s not even noon yet. Meanwhile, Business Week says things will only get worse for wage earners. Why does anyone bother to work?
http://www.businessweek.com/ma.....935448.htm
Re 4
Actually a hobby of mine is reading court cases and the legal briefs around them. I guess I mostly look at federal appellate court decisions though. I defer to your professional knowledge in any case.
Re 2
I didn’t realize that the bureaucracy surrounding the sale of liquor was ‘small business.’
The fact remains, the State has no business dealing in Liquor or for that matter, the Lottery. It spends 11 Million alone in advertising the lottery- such a waste. These jackholes are in the business of dispensing “sin” and then go and apply a “sin” tax to those that consume their products. Can you say “Cognitive dissonance”?
We also are going to build a new building for Labor and Industries to the tune of 255 million. This all while the state is already nearly 3 Billion in the red. These idiots in Olympia just don’t get it.
Also, and in unrelated news: Jim Mora was fired this morning as the Seattle Seahawks head coach. Still breaking on the details.
Look,
I think we are missing the point. Governor Gregoire and ANY Democrat cannot support liquor privatization.
These are all UNION jobs here folks. Lots of them. Good fucking luck getting any Democrat to push it.
And with evidence showing it limits consumption good fucking luck getting the social conservatives to buy off on it.
We are stuck with what we have. Next topic.
My god, hasn’t the economic disaster brought about by the “privatize we will save money” crowd proved to you that it doesn’t work. Privatize adds a profit level and business is not at all necessarily more “efficient,” it doesn’t save money and never has.
I love the system here. It’s the PERFECT model for the legalization of substances like mj. Anti-small business??? What kind of miserable business is a liquor store? They’re on practically every corner in other states – eyesores and magnets for crime. You want that here?
Hey it’s ok if you disdain mj use. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. I don’t.
But don’t you also disdain the ugly crime and violence that come with prohibition?? This state’s liquor control practices are a model to ending that prohibition and the attendant crime and violence.
One of the things this state got right. Now if only they could fix the stupid tax system.
Hey Goldy,
You should do a piece on the tax measures in Oregon.
They’re going to try to tax the rich and the corporations to balance the budget!
I think it’ll pass.
Imagine Oregon SHAMING this State. Unbelievable!
Gregoire said:
“You’ll have what they have, which is Rite Aid sells all liquor, is that what you want in Washington state?…”
I don’t know – it was pretty damned convenient to walk into a Safeway in California and buy a bottle of booze, even at 4 am. Maybe we can just keep the state liquor stores open longer??
I moved here from a “private liquor store” state some 30 years ago. Along most commercial routes within my hometown, you could see a liquor store every block or so. In suburbs it was spread out a bit more (each city, town, and county had it’s own rules – it got pretty complicated). It’s a bit like seeing the payday lending stores that have popped up everywhere here, except the liquor stores were a lot seedier and with big red neon “Liquor” sings flashing in order to get your attention.
Yes, I fondly remember seeing those steel-cage encased storefronts with a big guy sitting on a stool right at the doorway where he could be easily seen, a shotgun in his lap to discourage robberies. Even so, every morning you would hear the news reports of the robberies of liquor stores with accompanied shootings that occured overnight.
Of course, as teenagers we all knew where we could go to buy liquor without being carded. Most of the times we didn’t even need to slip the clerk an extra five bucks, the clerk had already been told by the owner not to ask any questions. Of course, if the place was raided the clerk was the one who got charged for selling to minors, and the liquor store owner would just shrug, hire another clerk, and keep depositing the profits.
As for me, I’d rather pay a buck or two more for a bottle of liquor than have my children and grandchildren growing up in that kind of environment. (That’s purely a hypothetical concession, since I rarely drink and then only during cerimonial occassions for a sip of wine during a toast at a business dinner, etc.). Besides, remember that we aren’t talking about beer and wine, which makes up the major bulk of liquor sales and can be purchased in just about any grocery or convenience store in this state. We are only talking about harder liquors.
By the way, when I saw the headline, I thought this was going to be a post about this story:
Gregoire to Eyman: ‘Run for office’
The bottom line is:
If the same entity that is slapping a tax on a product labeling it a “sin tax”, then isn’t it retarded to be the overseer of the selling of the product? Me thinks so. But then, Democrats are never consistent in their positions on things.
17 – You tax something you want less of right???
Teenage alcohol abuse is 10 percent less here than in other states.
Mission accomplished. Don’t change what works.
@ 18
Um, no. It’s taxed to generate revenue for the state, city, county, federal, etc. Not necessarily because you want les of something.
You can take this arrow out of the quiver of possible aids to reducing spending if you want…that’s fine. You and the Governor can make a flimsy argument that it isn’t about union jobs…that’s fine too.
But every time you take an arrow out…makes YOUR job harder of cutting expenditures to balance the budget.
Make the cuts however you like! But don’t think every time you find a reason not to change or cut something ….that somehow defaults to a reason to raise taxes. Washingtonians won’t buy it!
Democrats are going to have a tough 2010 of cutting to arrive at a balanced budget. Good luck with that!
Umm, yes.. I’ve heard that argument many times from right wingers like Jack Kemp. Tax something more and you get less of it and vice versa. I’ve seen the same argument applied to the income tax from the right.
glenlivet 42.95 in wash vs. 22.99 a btl at whole foods in california last week.
Having grown up in California, I have always been used to Persian and Arab owned liquor stores on every block. Even 7-11 sells hard booze. So what? Forcing people to buy from state liquor stores is about as antiquated and back asswards as it gets. Think redneck state Blue Laws.
You’ve heard have you? Well, your hearings voices is the least of your problems. Are you and Goldy having a bet which one can go the longest without being a productive member of society and finding employment? Sad sacks.
An important point of order:
Privatising liquor sales is not new. This is just Tim Sheldon’s latest entry as paid shill for the beverage industry.
Just more corporate bullshit from a well known bad actor.
That’s pretty much all anyone needs to know.
@ 23 said: “Think redneck state Blue Laws”.
I’ve never seen a state-owned liquor store in a red state. There might be some, just not in the states I’ve seen (and having grown up in the South, I’ve driven through most of them).
The big fights there are over whether liquor should be sold at all, in what types and method, and what kinds of private stores, and in what manner.
For example, the major city just on the other side of the ridge sold beer and wine in 7-11’s, and liquor-by-the-drink in restaurants and specially licensed private stores. But you couldn’t buy beer or wine in a grocery store. In my little suburb, no liquor sales were allowed at all (which resulted in frequent raids on the VFW hall to shut down keggers). In another city north of where I grew up, the city had the same rules, but restaurants in various suburbs might sell “set-ups” (you brought in your own bottle of liquor), or be restricted to beer and wine only. The county didn’t allow any liquor sales at all, which tended to support the local moonshine industry (and travel to the nearest city).
For many years, the county where the Jack Daniels distillary was located didn’t allow sale or consumption of any alchohol at all – which makes you wonder how they tested the product.
Does Wal Mart carry booze in Calif.? Have they run the mom & pops out of business?
Just curious.
@22 – It would seem wise for California to boost the taxes on alcohol, given their dire financial straits.
On the subject at hand, I don’t really care if I have to purchase my ocassional bottle of scotch at a state store or a private store. I would, however, like to see the state stores realize they are in the customer service business – which means better hours, knowledgable staff and energetic service. Not that they haven’t improved over the years, they have. But they could do alot better.
@27 What mom & pop’s? Never saw one in CA during the years I lived there. It would have to be a very small market or the hoods in LA, not to have a few chain stores.
I love it that the Repugs want to sell off the the the State Liquor’s infrastructure in the middle of commercial RE bust. Guess they figure they can buy it for pennies on the dollar. Got hand to hand it too them, they always know how to make a buck at the expense of the taxpayer, while making it sound like they are doing them a favor.
should be legal, too.
We are currently in Arizona, where property taxes are drastically lower than ours in WA, and where it is a real pleasure to walk into any one of many stores and walk up and down the liguor section. Just looking at the selection is a treat. I’ve never been in any of the State liquor stores with that kind of choices. THAT’s only one reason why the state should give up holding the keys to liquor sales. There are more, but that’s a big one. Competition would be another.
I just got back from California, where you can walk into Costco and buy liquor for less than half the price we pay in state stores here.
But #28 hit the nail on the head: state liquor stores have no incentive to provide convenience or good customer service. In Spokane, there are exactly two liquor stores that stay open until 9:00 PM, and one of them is only open that late on weekends. Most of the others close at 7:00 — that’s seven hours before bars close and grocery stores stop selling beer, so clearly it’s not serving any higher social purpose.
Again Goldy reveals himself as a typical leftist control freak. “We must maintain control over liquor sales or demon rum will steal our children’s souls”.
@7 Be careful. People without legal training often misinterpret what they read by assuming vernacular meanings for words that have technical legal meanings. Appellate decisions are the law’s equivalent of shop manuals. Even a lawyer may not understand what the court is saying unless he obtains the parties’ briefs and reads them to get the context. The key to understanding court opinions is that they always respond to the parties’ arguments, so you have to know what the parties argued in order to understand the court’s response. Another trap is reading an appellate opinion more expansively than it actually is. It’s not safe to rely on the language of the opinion itself. A court’s decision is always limited to addressing the specific facts and issues before it, so you need to know what the facts and issues are, in order to figure out where the boundaries of the court’s ruling is. For example, a decision that says police may stop and search motorists in certain circumstances may apply only to non-Indians on Indian reservations (I made that up for illustration purposes).
@8 Liquor sales are a moneymaking business for the state. They produce around $200 million a year. If you privatize liquor sales, you either have to make up that revenue by raising taxes, or you have to cut spending by that much.
@9 “The fact remains, the State has no business dealing in Liquor or for that matter, the Lottery.”
The state is a sovereign and can do so if it chooses.
“It spends 11 Million alone in advertising the lottery- such a waste.”
So what? Drug companies spend over half of their total revenue on marketing to get you to buy drugs your parents and grandparents got along fine without.
“These jackholes are in the business of dispensing ‘sin’ and then go and apply a ‘sin’ tax to those that consume their products. Can you say ‘Cognitive dissonance’?”
Are liquor and gambling less sinful when done for private profit instead of raising revenues for public purposes?
Perhaps in your childish and simplistic world the state is promoting sin. A more mature and thoughtful person might conclude that people are going to drink and gamble anyway, and these activities may be easier to control when the state runs them. There also clearly is a monetary motive in the state giving itself a more or less exclusive franchise. The tradeoff is that if you wish to privatize these profits, then you must replace these revenues by some other means.
No, there really isn’t a “cognitive dissonance” here. Imposing “sin taxes” to discourage liquor consumption is consistent with the state’s regulatory goals of minimizing the adverse impacts of liquor consumption on society.
“We also are going to build a new building for Labor and Industries to the tune of 255 million. This all while the state is already nearly 3 Billion in the red. These idiots in Olympia just don’t get it.”
You’re the idiot who just doesn’t get it. The capital and operating budgets are completely separate. Construction of state buildings is paid for with bonds, not operating revenues.
I actually don’t know anything about a new L & I building. The state has real estate managers whose job is to get the best deal for the state, and who make recommendations to decisionmakers on such questions as whether to lease or own. Sometimes they contract with a private entity who builds and owns a building, and lease it back to the state. There are a lot of different ways the state meets its space needs, and administrators and policymakers have quite a lot of flexibility in how they do this.
For someone like you to assume they’re simply throwing money away on a project of that magnitude, with no cost-benefit analysis of various alternatives, is lunacy.
@14 How about if we adopt Wisconsin’s nutty system? State law shuts down carry-out sales (in both stores and taverns) at 9 p.m., but bars stay open until 2 a.m., so if you want to drink after 9 p.m. you have to do it in a bar and then drive home drunk.
@15 And then there’s the fictional but iconic liquor store scene in “American Graffiti”.
@19 “Um, no. It’s taxed to generate revenue for the state, city, county, federal, etc. Not necessarily because you want les of something.”
In your simplistic and childish world a law can have only one purpose; but in the reality-based adult world, the state liquor monopoly serves multiple purposes — regulatory and revenue.
@20 Other states are releasing prison inmates. If you want to cut spending further here, you’d better be ready to do the same. You simply can’t get to 2 billion dollars of cuts by eliminating 2-million-dollar programs — there aren’t enough of them. To get cuts of that magnitude, you have to cut the big programs, and there are only three of them: Education, transportation, and prisons. Education is a constitutional mandate and transportation is funded with dedicated taxes, so that leaves the prison budget, and nothing else.
@41 Gregoire and the legislature made their bed two or three years ago by not cutting more then. They’re just trying to play chicken and get the public to blink…and we’re not buying it! They can’t cut they’re going to pay the price.
As for prisons I’ll agree that the war on drugs failed miserably as a lame metaphor and we should probably make some tough choices about letting the non-violent ones out under certain conditions. That’s a national paradigm shift unfortunately that R’s brought on us out of fear and D’s didn’t fight because they liked the union jobs.
And I’ve read the Constitution and no where does it say what specific dollar level funding has to be supported. A TON of money is going to education with not nearly enough return. Telling the teacher union to buck up and give less money to administrator bureacrats will pay for many more frontline teachers if the legislators would grow a pair.
Transportation is trickier. ;)
But, one good way is to thin the herd of employees across the board and make the remaining ones pay for more of their health coverage. They oughta have to live a with partially matched 401k and have to pay 50% of their premiums like the lucky working stiffs do. Olympia bureacrats are like Frenchies that want a 32 hour work week and a life-time pension.
It’s not a sustainable model, hasn’t been one for a long time, and is overdue to change.
Maybe we should just offer them minimum wage and win the race to the bottom. Personally, the wages the state offers are too low in my field (IT) to even interest me during a recession.
back on topic…
From the BBC, a nice review of the change in drinking patterns in the UK. Less beer, more hard stuff, and the corresponding rise in chronic liver disease and cirrhosis.
gotta love the contortions and gyrations that liberals perform as they try to justify the antiquated state liquor stores.
Riddle me this? If the state liquor stores are such a boon, why not restrict beer and wine sales to them too? Alcohol is alcohol.
Hate to be called a conservative BUT
WTF
SJ just got a FREE membership in the NRA …. well sorta free, I got a free, embossed membership card in the mail!
Made me think, why should the state sell booze as opposed to guns?
Seems to me that state controlled gun sales offer a LOT more reason than state controlled booze.
Think about the Constutional issue … the second amendment says NOTHING about the right to sell arms.
You wanna sell your gun? Great! The state could have a buy back program to control profiteers! Some might cavil that this would be ubnfair to collectors but . the second amendment says NOTHING about the right to collect arms.
You wanna bring your gun in form Idaho? GREAT! Just bring it into your friendly WA state guy store where you can register your ownership! . the second amendment says NOTHING about the right to supply arms across state lines
Hmmmm …
I just realized the . the second amendment says NOTHING about the right to own arms. So maybe guns could be leased by the state!
With respect, SJ, you’re wrong on all counts.
The 2nd Amendment was the provision by revolutionary men to make sure revolutions were feasible. A state militia was the mechanism for fighting over intrusive federal governments. Are you really sure you want to draw your lines in the sand on this amendment, bucko?
Sure and the First Amendment protects freedom of speech, and of the press, but says nothing about freedom to hear, or freedom to read.
So let’s just mandate earplugs and blindfolds as needed to shut down Limbaugh, Malkin, etc.
SJ you’re a genius—NOT!
i remain perplexed by a state that is largely left wing but someone loves having government controlled liquor stores. I absolutely had the restricted set of choices that i get from this single source supplier. i just dont get why libs love government run alcohol..