The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette began a laudable series today whose aim is nothing less than ending the state's monopoly on booze sales by privatizing its stores.

Among the newspaper's disclosures so far:

• The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board generated nearly half a billion dollars profit last year for state coffers on $1.69 billion in sales. Much of the revenue, however, went to pay the more than 3,600 full- or part-time state store clerks and managers, plus more than 400 people at its Harrisburg headquarters.
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• The average annual salary of a Pennsylvania state store clerk is $30,000, plus health benefits and a pension. A phone survey of privately owned liquor stores in neighboring Ohio suggests that clerks there typically earn half what Pennsylvania clerks make, with no benefits.
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• It's grossly, maybe even purposely, inefficient. In the state-store distribution system, all wine and spirits must go through one of three warehouses, in Pittsburgh, Scranton and Philadelphia. Although a state store is just a few miles from some Erie County wineries, the winery has to truck its wares all the way to Pittsburgh when the local store needs to be restocked.
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• Despite a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision that was supposed to put in-state and out-of-state wineries on equal footing for shipping wines directly to customers, Pennsylvania is still listed as a "no-ship" state on the California Wine Institute's Web page.
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• A $10 bottle of wine costs about $18 after markups, charges and state taxes get tacked on.

Labels: Ed Rendell, liquor, PLCB, wine