Inquirer Editorial: Credible plan gets state out of booze business

Gov. Corbett's proposed unfettering of liquor, wine, and beer sales seems to have upset every insider and interest group with a stake in Pennsylvania's ministry of alcohol, from legislators to government unions to beer distributors. Which leads to one unavoidable conclusion: He must be onto something.

These are, after all, the same forces that have kept the state's time-traveling liquor control machinery in place lo, these many decades after Eliot Ness. Their grousing is a given - a prerequisite, even - for any serious effort to impose logic and modernity on the hoary, Byzantine system.

The governor deserves credit for going big despite these barriers. By selling off the state's wine and spirits monopoly and liberalizing beer and wine retail, he is proposing unequivocally to "get the state out of the liquor business" for the right reason: because it is a business. A free market will serve Pennsylvania's consumers best, much as it does in 48 other states.

Indeed, government liquor control is about as familiar to most Americans as scrapple. That's why, as Corbett noted during a Center City news conference last week, a State Store next to Reading Terminal Market has a sign explaining to tourists that they'll have to walk four blocks to buy beer.

The administration's plan sets the attainable goal of maintaining current levels of alcohol revenue. Corbett hasn't suggested that privatization will plug budget holes or yield an unrealistic windfall. And his proposed spending of a relatively modest $1 billion in projected proceeds on education is a clever way of clarifying the connection between eliminating unnecessary government - like the Liquor Control Board - and improving core public services, like education.

Of course, basic school funding should not be contingent on LCB reform. But one-time revenue from sales of licenses and assets could help address needs such as the school-employee pension shortfall or capital projects in poor districts. As Philadelphia School Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. noted in expressing support for Corbett's idea, public education needs all the help it can get.

Besides dismantling the State Stores' monopoly on wine and liquor, Corbett proposes a welcome loosening of the state's tightly regulated beer market, expanding sales (along with those of wine in some cases) to big-box, grocery, and convenience stores. Considering that beer distributors would be given new opportunities to sell by the six-pack and apply for licenses to sell wine and liquor, their criticism of the proposal is unreasonable.

They, the unions, and the legislature must recognize that in a time of tight government budgets - and after a litany of LCB embarrassments - knee-jerk support for the status quo has ceased to be a defensible position.