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| MRA poster inside Harris Teeter |
One of the biggest shocks to the system many new residents of Montgomery County experience, is the moment they learn they cannot purchase beer or wine at their local grocery store or convenience store. They quickly become familiar with Montgomery County's government monopoly on alcohol sales, and the archaic liquor laws of MoCo and Maryland. Restaurateurs and retailers frustrated with the status quo that reduces the profit margins of their businesses - and puts them at a disadvantage when competing against their rivals in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia - made a push to change these laws in the last decade. The effort ran out of steam when no significant media campaign or financial contributions were employed to directly boost the candidates for office who would vote to overturn the Prohibition-style system.
Now the Maryland Retailers Association is reviving the campaign with a new website, and posters such as the one seen above this week in County supermarkets. There is a lot of information and data on the website. It has an easy way to contact your elected officials to encourage them to modernize our liquor laws. Whether the effort will be any more successful than the last remains to be seen.
If the MRA and business owners don't write fat checks to the candidates who will vote to change the laws, and won't publicly endorse those candidates and send glossy mailers with a list of their names to every voter, the campaign will fail again. Most of the articles linked to on the website are from media outlets who strongly support the incumbents and candidates who favor and will preserve the ossified government liquor monopoly we have now. That's not exactly a smart way to propagandize the public in favor of liquor reform, folks.
Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich was prophetic about many things. He was savagely pilloried by local officials and the media during his time in office for supporting casinos and bus rapid transit. Both later became policy cornerstones of the Montgomery County and Maryland political machines of his most-venomous opponents. One other thing he used to say that has aged very well: Until business owners "get dangerous," and actually back candidates - Democratic, Republican, Green, independent - who will vote their way, nothing will change. The MRA has a nice website. But their campaign doesn't sound very "dangerous" yet.
We are so 1940's 'blue law mentality' oriented. Too bad we can't live like that anymore: we get the county dysfunction at our peril. Old rules, modern crime, all on our substandard elected 'officials.
ReplyDeleteDoes it really hurt the bottom line of restaurants? Any decent liquor is way cheaper in MoCo liquor stores than in private stores elsewhere. MoCo sells everything at or below MSRP where private stores mark up anything desirable.
ReplyDeleteHow do they keep up with wine menus ? It's all at the caprice of the county.
DeleteGreat point about our former governor, Ehrlich. And the one who later championed both of those projects you mentioned has a similar sounding name but couldn't be farther away from the former gov. Even Democrat and former state comptroller, Franchot, spent a lot of time and effort drafting an exhaustive report and basically a study on how the county could go private and still recoup the millions they receive from alcohol sales but for some reason, they didn't do it. This is a prohibition era law and par for the MoCo course, one of the few of its kind left in the country.
ReplyDeleteJunkies desperate for their fix.
ReplyDeleteWine outlet stores in other counties sell at cheaper prices. One wine bar owner in Howard Co. that I spoke to a couple of years ago had considered opening a bar in Mont. Co. until he discovered how difficult it would be to deal with the Liquor board. It is a dinosaur that needs to be buried.
ReplyDelete", one of the few of its kind left in the country."
ReplyDeleteMoCo is the ONLY county in the country which runs the liquor business.
And 6:15 is a reliable voter for a certain type, every time.
@6:18 I used to live in Virginia, which operated liquor stores under the ABC (alcoholic beverage control) banner.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like that's still the case (with more than 400 such store across the commonwealth).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Alcoholic_Beverage_Control_Authority
"... ABC stores are the only retail outlets in Virginia where customers may purchase distilled spirits. The profits that Virginia ABC contributes are collected from sales of distilled spirits at ABC stores, taxes collected on beer and wine sales, violation penalties and license fees. Since its establishment in 1934, Virginia ABC has contributed more than $9 billion to the Commonwealth's general fund. Virginia ABC employs more than 4,000 people statewide..."