Privatizing the liquor business
Early in the campaign for this year’s liquor-privatization initiative, onetime spokesman Mark Funk was getting a little tired of answering questions about Costco. The Issaquah-based retail chain spent millions to get Initiative 1183 on the ballot and promote it. But an entire coalition was supporting the measure, he pointed out—restaurants, retailers, grocers—a veritable “big tent” of business trade associations.
The problem was that none of them spent any early money on the signature drive. A big tent? The way this one started, it looked more like a big box.
By Election Day, though, it’s a good bet they’ll all be bellying up to the bar—the business coalition, distributors, labor unions, and yes, big-box retailers like Costco. I-1183, a new and improved version of an initiative voters narrowly rejected last year, would get the state out of the liquor-selling business. For voters, probably the only point that matters is that it would bring booze to supermarkets and shutter the state’s chain of 329 state-run and contract liquor stores. For politicians, it’s one of those fascinating and interminable debates about the proper role of state government.
But for the commercial interests pulling the strings in this year’s campaign, what really counts is the billion dollars or so that Washingtonians spend every year on booze. I-1183 stands an entire industry on its head. It would end the monopoly on liquor sales the state has enjoyed since the end of Prohibition, eliminating about a thousand union jobs in the state liquor stores while theoretically creating new ones in the private sector. There also would be a big change in the way the industry operates: Liquor would be distributed and sold by private businesses that meet certain strict requirements, allowing the government to “focus on enforcing state liquor laws and regulating liquor sales,” according to the Yes on 1183 literature.
The issue makes a huge difference for every interest involved. It’s just that if they argued the case in a straightforward way, no one else might care. So that’s why, as Election Day approaches, you’re hearing all about vodka-swilling teens veering onto and off the state’s highways. Never mind that 32 other states allow hard-liquor sales in supermarkets and have drunken-driving stats no worse than Washington’s. Besides, beer is often the drink of choice for teens, and every corner gas station already sells it.
The most obvious argument for the initiative has problems, too. Normally, when people argue about privatization,
Comments
Post new comment