March 14, 2007 2:40PM # Bureaucrats Drunk with Power? By Brandon Arnold --- SHARE Last month, Justin Logan [blogged](https://www.cato.org/2007/02/09/montgomery-county-socialism/#more-1482) about the socialist alcohol controls in Montgomery County, Maryland. For those of you not in the DC area, Montgomery County is a very wealthy, very liberal Washington suburb with our nation’s only completely government-run alcohol distribution system. Yesterday, the *Washington Post* ran an excellent [article](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/12/AR2007031201341.html) that describes how this system is an absolute nightmare for the county’s restaurants. Here’s an overview of the wine distribution process: > Let’s say the restaurant orders the wine from a private distributor on Thursday. The distributor then faxes or hand-delivers the order to the Department of Liquor Control. A county employee writes up a purchase order and faxes it back to the distributor. On Monday or Tuesday, the distributor delivers the wine to the county warehouse. On Wednesday, a white or navy blue box truck bearing Montgomery’s “Gardez Bien” county seal delivers it to the restaurant. Now contrast that with the privately-run distribution system for restaurants in neighboring jurisdictions: > Restaurants in the District and Virginia buy wine from private distributors at wholesale prices, which includes the distributors’ markup. Placing an order is as easy as making a [phone call](http://www.cards2phone.com/). If an order comes up short or a large party unexpectedly drinks all the Diamond Creek cabernet, the distributor can make a delivery by the next day. The system results in major headaches for restaurants, limited wine options for oenophiles, and, of course, greater costs for consumers: > A bottle that wholesales for $100 in the District costs Montgomery [restaurants](http://www.executiverestaurant.com/) $125. If a restaurant tries to double or triple the purchase price — a standard practice — a bottle priced at $200 or $300 in a District restaurant ends up on a Montgomery wine list at $250 or $375. You might ask why a county would subject itself to such an inefficient and expensive scheme. Well… > “We benefit financially from it,” \[Montgomery County Executive Isiah\] Leggett Leggett said. “But more importantly, you don’t see liquor stores all over Montgomery County like you might see in other jurisdictions, and I think citizens like that.” Call me crazy, but I’d prefer a few liquor stores in my neighborhood over outrageously priced, government-controlled wine. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Regulation](https://www.cato.org/regulatory-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).