Union: Keep state stores

The news story " Privatizing state stores could help plug budget, but true costs unknown " (Jan. 9 and TribLIVE.com) should stop the privatization effort in its tracks. The math just doesn't work, and it is impossible to imagine that the operators of the big-box stores will do a better job of controlling sales to minors.

The gentleman in the liquor business in Florida says he paid $385,000 for one license and $75,000 for another. Licenses here would have to average $2.3 million to bring in the $2 billion the privateers say they'll raise. Yet a businessman is telling us that it just won't happen!

When someone argues that the laws against selling to minors are the same whether the stores are state-run or privately run, they are wrong. Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board employees are trained to spot kids trying to buy and have no incentive to sell to them. The more that private stores sell, the more money they make. Today, kids buy cigarettes at convenience stores all the time, even though it's illegal. Is that what we want for liquor• And do we want the big chains to sell liquor• Wine and whiskey would be just two more items on the shelf, next to milk and potato chips. That's who sells liquor in West Virginia now.

The story makes clear that Pennsylvania would lose under a private liquor system. People make decent livings working in the state stores. Private stores would mean a few shelves of liquor in the corner, with a minimum-wage, part-time, no-benefits clerk at the register.

I agree with one other comment in the story: Why are we trying to fix something that isn't broke?

Wendell W. Young IV

The writer is president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Pennsylvania Wine and Spirits Council, which includes some 3,000 state store workers who are part of UFCW Local 1776.