Montgomery County Socialism

For readers in or around the DC area, the Washington City Paper has a nice cover story on the draconian Department of Liquor Control in the People's Republic of Montgomery County, Md. The DLC is a government agency that controls the supply and distribution of every drop of alcohol sold in MC.

The piece sketches out some of the nightmarish experiences that business owners in MC have to go through to procure otherwise widely-available wines, and how the county outrageously cranks up the prices and provides godawful service to the business owners. (For example, a bottle that sold for $240 at a shi-shi DC restaurant is available for MC restaurant owners to purchase from the county for $260. They'd then have to mark it up themselves, again, to make a profit.)

Finally, the author of the piece interviews the director of the DLC, George Griffin, and asks him, "What gives?"

Griffin then proceeds to reel off some impressive statistics on how control jurisdictions have lower rates of underage drinking and fewer alcohol-related traffic fatalities for people under 21 than open jurisdictions. (An independent study forwarded to me by the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association seems to confirm his stats.) But then Griffin pauses briefly and delivers a disarmingly direct kicker to his list of justifications for MoCo’s system: “And that’s in addition to the $22 million that we give the county in unrestricted funds.”

Since taking over the DLC in 2001, after disgraced director Howard L. Cook Jr. was forced to leave for misusing a county credit card (among other misdeeds), Griffin will be the first to admit the contradictory nature of his job. It’s both to promote the “moderation and responsible behavior in all phases of distribution and consumption”…and to make a buttload of money to dump into the county’s budget. In the last five and a half years alone, the DLC has transferred more than $100 million to the general fund.

It isn't just fine wines, either. When I was in college, I worked at a Bethesda pizza place to pay the bills. I recall during one of our busiest seasons, we ran out of all draft pilsner beer — Bud, Bud Light, Miller Light, etc. We begged, pleaded, beseeched the county to bring us more. Business had gone into the toilet, with no beer to serve with the pizza. The response from the DLC? "We'll be there when we get there." They got there about a week later.

Meanwhile, DC restaurant owners are laughing all the way to the bank:

Some drinkers are already laughing at the wine choices in MoCo. “Nobody can think of a single restaurant that’s in Montgomery County that has anything approaching a noteworthy wine list,” says Mark Slater, chef sommelier at Citronelle, who once co-owned a restaurant in the county. “I don’t know why the citizens of the county even let that stuff go on. It’s punitive.”

Get the whole sorry scoop here.