Tom Corbett, Privateer

“I'm all about privatization,” says Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Corbett. In case that wasn't clear, his chief of staff Kevin Harley adds, “The governor is a proponent of bold privatization. That has been his consistent position from day one—and it hasn't changed.”

Yesterday, Gov. Corbett announced his plan to sell or auction off the state liquor store system and expand the number of outlets permitted to sell liquor, wine and beer. He optimistically claims this will raise a one-time windfall of over $1 billion as follows:

• $575 million from the sale of liquor licenses.
• $224 million from auctioning off the 1200 state liquor stores.
• $107 million for new wine and beer licenses.
• $112.5 million for licenses allowing beer distributors to sell liquor.

Apparently, the governor is not confident that this proposal will survive on its own merit, so he has tied it to the more popular cause of education. The $1 billion will be used to fund block grants for school districts, to be targeted to four areas: safety, early education, individualized learning, and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs.

Gov. Corbett claims the new system will be “revenue neutral” in the long term, but the numbers don't appear to add up. Currently, since the state owns the liquor stores, they take in revenue from both profits (the difference between wholesale and retail liquor prices) and taxes on liquor sales. If they are going to give up the profits, they are going to have to sell a lot more booze (at higher prices?) to make up for those lost profits with additional tax money. Maybe he is indirectly asking Pennsylvania residents to get drunk more often “for the sake of the children.”

Less than three weeks ago, the governor announced the sale of the Pennsylvania state lottery to Camelot, a British firm that promises to increase gambling revenue, so Pennsylvanians are already being asked to throw more of their money away for the sake of our senior citizens.

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Gov. Corbett also supports expanding our reliance on charter schools, another form of privatization. We should not necessarily assume that all of the $1 billion will go to public schools, since local school districts are required to pay charter school tuition for students in their districts. And what exactly does the governor mean by “individualized instruction?”

Blackmail is usually defined as threatening “to make a gain or cause a loss to another unless a demand is met.” In his first two years in office, the governor has cut back sharply in state funding for public schools. Apparently, to get some of that money back, Pennsylvanians must agree to his liquor privatization plan.

Mike Crossey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the public school teachers' union, commented, “It's nice that the governor has acknowledged that he created a school funding crisis, but our students shouldn't have to count on liquor being available on every corner in order to have properly funded schools.”