Governor Bob McDonnell really wants to privatize Virginia’s liquor outlets. He’s so committed to the idea that he recently hired the PFM Group, a national financial-management consultancy, to the tune of $76,900 in taxpayer dollars. He hired them to figure out a way to make privatization possible, after failing to convince skeptical state legislators of the brilliance of his proposals. His idea is to let free enterprise take over the state’s 75-year monopoly on alcoholic beverages, and use that purely theoretical increased revenue to fill the state’s coffers for transportation issues. On the surface, McDonnell’s legislative desire seems reasonable enough, until you realize that no amount of fuzzy math, anti-regulation rhetoric and hired gun influence peddling is going to change the state’s chiseled in stone aversion to any reasonable debate concerning fermented beverages. Lost in this smoke and mirrors discussion is that even if McDonnell does succeed in his quest to privatize the sale of booze in Virginia, the Gestapo at the ABC will continue it’s puritanical legislative fascism. They will continue to tax and harass businesses with the enforcement of antiquated laws and restrictions designed to shut down any business at any time, when they and they alone deem it necessary. Sure, the governor talks a compelling free market game. Based on current law, Section 4.1 of the Virginia Code, entitled the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act, he could begin the privatization of the state’s ABC store system without seeking any legislative changes from the General Assembly (if the 3 ABC Commissioners were supportive). But the current tyranny of the ABC would remain unchanged.
Governor Bob McDonnell really wants to privatize Virginia’s liquor outlets. He’s so committed to the idea that he recently hired the PFM Group, a national financial-management consultancy, to the tune of $76,900 in taxpayer dollars. He hired them to figure out a way to make privatization possible, after failing to convince skeptical state legislators of the brilliance of his proposals. His idea is to let free enterprise take over the state’s 75-year monopoly on alcoholic beverages, and use that purely theoretical increased revenue to fill the state’s coffers for transportation issues. On the surface, McDonnell’s legislative desire seems reasonable enough, until you realize that no amount of fuzzy math, anti-regulation rhetoric and hired gun influence peddling is going to change the state’s chiseled in stone aversion to any reasonable debate concerning fermented beverages. Lost in this smoke and mirrors discussion is that even if McDonnell does succeed in his quest to privatize the sale of booze in Virginia, the Gestapo at the ABC will continue it’s puritanical legislative fascism. They will continue to tax and harass businesses with the enforcement of antiquated laws and restrictions designed to shut down any business at any time, when they and they alone deem it necessary. Sure, the governor talks a compelling free market game. Based on current law, Section 4.1 of the Virginia Code, entitled the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act, he could begin the privatization of the state’s ABC store system without seeking any legislative changes from the General Assembly (if the 3 ABC Commissioners were supportive). But the current tyranny of the ABC would remain unchanged.
In other words, McDonnell believes the government should not impede the potential for profitability, but he and the morality police will continue to use the full power of government to legislate and restrict alcohol consumption. Take, for example, the ABC’s recent letter to the 17,000 establishments with licenses to sell alcohol. The letter made clear the state’s concerns about alcoholic energy drinks. ABC spokeswoman Rebecca V. Gettings said the agency is looking at options for controlling use of the popular drinks, citing the hospitalization of nine students at Central Washington University last month as the impetus for their concerns. Here’s the rub. While McDonnell is busy making the pitch of the unproven financial windfall he thinks will come with the privatization of alcohol, under the pretext of concern for public safety, government is actively seeking to restrict the sale of a trendy, taxable beverage.
And all this time I thought Republicans stood for government out of your life. They want government to back off when it comes to moneymaking potential, but when it comes to the average citizen’s free choice to do with his or her life as they please, time and time again they actively work to restrict it.
Having said that, stupidity knows no sole party affiliation when it comes alcohol. Mayor Dwight Jones and Richmond City Council passed the legally questionable dance-hall ordinance after this past spring’s spate of violence in Shokoe Bottom. It requires existing nightclubs to apply for a public dance hall permit, which holds business owners accountable for actions outside their clubs. In a hysterical display of administrative ineptitude, permits weren’t available until a week before the November 13th deadline. The mayor’s office did issue a 30-day grace period to businesses wanting to apply for the permit, which was born from the death by a thousand administrative cuts favored by city hall when it comes to dealing with issues rightly or wrongly attributed to the sale of alcohol. Never mind that none of the violence that sparked the birth of this ludicrous ordinance can be attributed to any of the targeted Shockoe Bottom businesses in the city’s designated entertainment zone, or that good old-fashioned police work apprehended the perpetrators of the crimes. City officials always jump at the chance to cut of their nose despite their face. Brilliant.
Instead of privatizing alcohol, the first thing McDonnell and legislators should do is make it legal to have a bar in Virginia. In case you didn’t know, we don’t have bars in Virginia; we have restaurants that serve booze. Currently, the absurd, anti-business Virginia law requires that every restaurant must sell enough food and soda to account for at least 45% of the liquor and non-liquor sales, in order to sell alcohol. Restaurants and bars are two entirely different taxable entities, and forcing business owners to operate under these crippling legislative conditions impedes the city’s procurement of desperately needed tax dollars. Not only that, the litany of archaic rules and regulations by which they are forced to abide in order to sell alcohol stack the odds against maintaining a profitable business. To make matters worse, the regulations are written as such that even the most lucrative of businesses could be shut down, depending on the whims of the ABC. And god help you if you are foolish enough to contest their judgment, as there is no legal recourse for the business owner to take to challenge their decisions. Their word is final.
To illustrate the ruthless tyranny by which the ABC operates: a couple of years ago, a restaurant in Shockoe Bottom that promoted bands put a poster in their window advertising an upcoming show. On the poster was a bar with a poster on its window that said it served beer colder than your ex-wife’s heart. Nobody gave it much thought until an ABC agent showed up and confiscated the poster, saying that having it in the window broke the law about having alcohol promotions visible to the public (that’s right Virginia, you can advertise alcohol within the confines of your business, but if the general public can see it, it’s against the law). The fine for the infraction was 10,000 dollars. The owners of the business decided to fight the decision, but to no avail; the suspension of their liquor license, the imperatively high cost of legal representation, and the absolute rule of the ABC was too much to fight. The whole sordid affair put them deep in debt and, ultimately, out of business.
The basis of this continuing legal intimidation is rooted in the legislative desire to keep people from drinking. Well, too bad Virginia, people are going to drink. Instead of wasting valuable tax dollars enforcing outdated, morality-based legislation, the simple act of allowing a business to serve nothing but alcohol, if they so desire, would increase the state’s tax revenue–much more than the fiscally dubious pipe dreams of privatization, or the favored legislative path of slow, steady strangulation. Music venues would prosper, free from the shackles of being forced to be what they are not. The nightlife that Richmond and the state has long given lip service to would have a fighting chance to actually succeed for a change. Every city that has a thriving music scene allows bars, and until Virginia lets its venues and nightclubs operate without the invasive, doomed-to-fail legality by which they must currently must abide, nothing will change. Grand openings will be quickly followed by grand closings, tax dollars will be lost, and government invasion of private life will continue unimpeded.
It’s enough to make you want to drink.
Chris Bopst has been a fixture on the Richmond music scene for over two decades, playing in GWAR, the Alter Natives, and The Holy Rollers, among other bands. His free-form radio show, The Bopst Show, has existed for over a decade, appearing on multiple Richmond AM radio stations before becoming an internet podcast in 2008. Weekly episodes of the podcast can be found at rvanews.com.
