Privatizing VT State liquor business ?
In hard times antique dealers looking for quick bargains used to travel back roads looking for run down houses whose owners might have hidden treasures. Many dealers scooped up good investments from people desperately in need of cash by trolling this way.
Dave Gram of AP reports that a small meeting took place Wednesday in Montpelier where a proposal to privatize part Vermont’s liquor business was presented. The Maine based company backed by a large private equity firm that is making a similar proposal to Washington state legislators. A Montpelier lobbyist explained how the meeting came about
[it] “germinated from a conversation he had with [Senate President Pro Tem] Campbell about "the advantages and disadvantages of getting out of the liquor business.”
An up-front payment, twenty year lease and revenue sharing were mentioned. Options were presented by Dean Williams, president and CEO of Maine Beverage Company to attendees Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell and Sen. Richard Mazza, a senior Democrat and member of the Senate Rules Committee.
This particular solicitation that “germinated” with Senate President ProTem Campbell didn’t get any traction with the Vermont lawmakers. The lobbyist, William Shouldice that set up the meeting seemed to distance himself telling the AP reporter "
They’re [the company, whose Maine operations are managed by the Massachusetts-based Martignetti Companies with financial backing from the Lindsay Goldberg private equity firm] not even a client" of his lobbying business. "I just did them a favor," in setting up the meeting.
This meeting raises worries that as revenue stays scarce and if courage can’t be found to put taxes on the table as an option then deals selling/leasing off parts of Vermont to for-profit companies will look more and more inviting.
The trolling antique dealer always left a calling card in case the mark changed their mind.
Any idea how much revenue Vermont derives from liquor sales and what the state workforce consists of?
…through charging extra for liquor to pad corporate profits. We certainly can’t tax the rich, as they pay too much already: http://thinkprogress.org/?p=15…
While I was visiting family in a warm state down south, I saw on The History Channel a show called “American Pickers”. A couple of guys in a Mercedes commercial truck drive around the country trying to talk collectors and hoarders out of their valuable junk for a pittance. To be fair, if a Mercedes box van comes up my driveway, anything I might have to sell just triples in price.
So maybe the state makes an offer the company can refuse; or it just refuses to deal (that happens on the show, too).
Selling off the future earnings of state assets and resources for short-term gain is a sucker’s deal, especially when there are other time-tested and prior Republican administration-initiated options to get us through a short-term shortfall.
NanuqFC
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
to see it handed over to a private entity. I would like to see whatever it is they do in New York state, which, from what I can tell, is a bunch of independent, privately owned liquor stores. I’m hardly a free-market disciple by any stretch of the imagination, but after living in areas with a diverse array of liquor options, Vermont’s system blows pretty hard from a consumer’s perspective. Even though New Hampshire’s is state run, the choices available are much greater than Vermont’s. Can’t even find a bottle of Hornitos Anejo anywhere in central VT. Pathetic.
I can see no advantage to having state-owned liquor stores. It doesn’t matter if the state does it better than private enterprise, it’s just not something the state should be responsible for.