Booze You Can Use

LCB to PA Lawmakers: Really, It’s Not Our Fault We Suck So Much!

Photo: Philadelphia Brownstoner

If we can glean anything useful from yesterday’s budget hearings in Harrisburg, it’s that someone should’ve threatened to ax the LCB years ago! Miraculously with its very existence on the line, the state’s liquor board is suddenly full of big ideas on how it can reduce prices, cut costs and give the Keystone State’s tipplers what they want. That’s after an epic 78-year run of putting the screws to Pennsylvanians with notoriously lackluster service and product selection, and some of the highest booze prices in the country. Now the board is telling lawmakers that it’s not its fault, and is urging the legislature to relax the liquor code.

Proposed changes would allow the LCB to price products more intelligently, hire non civil service workers and extend Sunday hours at liquor stores across the state. While a growing number of politicians are backing away from an all out sell-off of the state’s liquor stores, budget bully Gov. Tom Corbett deserves some recognition for lighting a fire under the LCB, and affecting changes that hopefully we can believe in.
LCB offers modernizing ideas to counter privatizing [Inquirer]

LCB to PA Lawmakers: Really, It’s Not Our Fault We Suck So Much!