Conservation groups join coalition that wants wine sold in grocery stores
Scenic Hudson and American Farmland Trust announced today that they are supporting a proposal to allow the sale of wine in grocery stores, saying it would help raise money the state really needs and preserve farmland.
Gov. David Paterson proposed selling wine in grocery stores in his recommended budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year, projecting it would raise $300 million from license fees, but the Senate and Assembly did not include the it in their budget resolutions. New Yorkers for Economic Growth and Open Markets, a coalition of small businesses, environmental groups, liquor stores and other organizations, continues its push to get the proposal into law.
“Selling wine in grocery stores will help keep farms in the Hudson Valley working,” said Andy Bicking, Scenic Hudson’s director of public policy. “In addition to providing important benefits like local food, clean water and economically sustainable communities through farmland protection, this measure will raise $300 million for New York state. We strongly urge the Legislature to support this proposal, which will have such a positive impact on New York.”
Bicking said Scenic Hudson supports amending the proposal to dedicate 5 percent of the money raised to farmland protection. State and local governments and qualified non-profits would use the funds to buy conservation easements on working farms. Scenic Hudson has protected almost 8,000 acres of farmland in 10 communities in Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia and Orange counties since 1992.
Selling wine in grocery stores would create new markets for farms, vineyards and wineries that are dealing with “tremendous development pressure,” according to David Haight of the American Farmland Trust. The group, founded in 1980, has helped permanently protect more than two million acres of farm and ranchland across the country.
The Last Store on Main Street Coalition opposes allowing the sale of wine in grocery stores and disputes that license fees would raise $300 million. The coalition has called Paterson’s proposal a “job-killing plan.”
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The $300 million figure is pure fiction. It was $150 million last year and this year it magically grew to double the size. The Paterson administration has consistently ignored requests to show how they arrived at that figure. New Yorker’s have a right to know the true net cash flow of this decision but Paterson’s budget people will not substantiate these fictitious revenue numbers after repeated requests to do so.
The current bill proposal includes a ‘medallion’ system which effectively postpones any possible revenue from this proposal for 36 months effectively precluding it from adding any revenue to the state’s income stream for three years; a fact that they conveniently ignore when insisting that this plan will generate revenue to aid agriculture and conservation groups like this article/propaganda advertise.
In truth, this is a job killing plan that will result in a negative net cash flow to the state and is a political plum offered to the big-box food stores in return for their political support of a weak governor. Just remember the old adage: Q. How can you tell when a politician is lying? A. His lips are moving.
Ridiculous, RocMan. Absolutely silly. I know this is an old article, but with the deed now done (and no wine in grocery stores this year), it’s still relevant.
The liquor industry in this state reaps huge profits by charging prices that are completely out of line with the open market, then funnels that money into legislative campaigns so that it can stop the opening of wine and liquor markets to grocery stores (not all of which are “big boxes, I might remind you). I lived for the past two years in Michigan, where both wine and liquor are sold in grocery stores. Prices were . . . wait for it . . . 30%-50% lower than in the wine stores here (and Michigan’s tax on liquor is higher than NY’s, if you can believe that: http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/245.html).
Wine stores, liquor stores, if you want to stay in business, charge reasonable prices (don’t extort as you do now), and learn this basic economic lesson: you earn the most profit not by earning big profits on a few sales, but by earning smaller profits on many sales. But you refuse to learn that lesson (it requires more restocking, more ordering, more delivering—ie, more WORK), and instead cling to an outdated monopoly. Don’t worry, next time around we’ll be sure to let the public know which legislators got lots of money from which interests in this debate, and we’ll see how long the public is willing to put up with it.