Virginia Tomorrow

All summer, we’ve moiled along in the wrong debate in the matter of the governor’s plan to sell the state-owned liquor stores.  Should liquor sales be privatized? 

Absolutely.  Unequivocally. 

A state monopoly on alcohol sales makes no more sense than would similar monopolies on donut franchises, shoe stores, or tire recapping outlets. 

Then what has doomed this good idea, and flung, perhaps, some resolution-which I doubt-into January?  

Linking it to transportation funding-linkage that gives the politically nervous perfect cover to oppose it. 

Any successful so-called ‘Plan B’ will decouple the two.

We’re going to fix transportation in Virginia by selling the liquor stores like we’re going to dip out the Atlantic with a shot glass-and everybody knows it. 

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t privatize liquor sales in Virginia-not by selling the stores, but better by simply closing them, and enacting legislation that would completely deregulate the business in favor of the marketplace. 

The impact on state revenues?  They could go up-way up. 

Sure, we’d forgo the one-time influx a sale of the stores would bring, but we’d also be rid of the administrative, real estate, and personnel costs of refereeing liquor sales in Virginia.  It is not insignificant. 

We spend $138 million a year regulating and husbanding this business-more than current profits that come to the state. 

Add the current tax income, the projected increases from growth, and the savings in regulatory costs and we easily pick up $50 million a year in revenue without raising taxes.

What would we do with that increase?  Whatever.  That shouldn’t be a part of this debate.  The crux of this one is why the state is in the liquor business to begin with.