Ever wondered why the price of wine is so much higher in Montgomery County than elsewhere. This week, the City Paper went slumming and traveled out to MoCo to explore the operation of the county monopoly on beer, wine and liquor. Montgomery certainly has an interest in the monopoly that goes well beyond constraining the sale of alcohol:
The article missed another certain backer of the monopoly: DLC employees. I bet unionized employees for the Department of Liquor Control do better than equivalent store employees in non-control jurisdictions and would unsurprisingly like to keep their jobs.Standing in the middle of the Department of Liquor Control’s massive, 175,000-square-foot warehouse in Rockville, among nearly $20 million worth of booze, DLC Director George Griffin is pondering the question posed to him: Given the frustrations of some licensees, what service does the DLC provide that couldn’t be done better in the open, free-market system?
“There’s like a big picture and small picture,” says Griffin. “The big picture is that we are controlling alcohol. The people of Montgomery County made a decision to control alcohol…When [alcohol’s] abused, it has devastating consequences.”
Griffin then proceeds to reel off some impressive statistics on how control jurisdictions have lower rates of underage drinking and fewer alcohol-related traffic fatalities for people under 21 than open jurisdictions. (An independent study forwarded to me by the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association seems to confirm his stats.) But then Griffin pauses briefly and delivers a disarmingly direct kicker to his list of justifications for MoCo’s system: “And that’s in addition to the $22 million that we give the county in unrestricted funds.”
On the other hand, the system may drive business out of the County because people can get better selection and prices in neighboring jurisdictions. Total Wine in McClean, Virginia beats has far better prices and selection than MoCo stores. I wonder if anyone knows if the County would make more money simply levying a tax rather than running the business itself. A safe bet seems to be that DLC employees would strongly oppose the abolition of the current regime but that local restaurateurs would thrilled by it.
