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Special Interests Attempting to Limit Your Selection and Pocket Your MoneyTalk about the law of unintended consequences!SB 118 (Chesbro) is a bill in reaction to the US Supreme Court direct wine shipping decision that prohibited discriminatory legislation. The bill originally would have created a permit that could be applied for by anyone licensed to sell wine to consumers (wineries and wine retailers) in any state. The permit would require registration with the California ABC, payment of California taxes, the same protections against delivery to minors that currently exist for CA wineries and retailers, limitations on shipment volume and would give the ABC the authority to regulate the shipments.
However, the mega-wholesale distributor interests in CA (Southern Wine and Spirits and Young's Market Company) have called in their political muscle in order to remove out-of-state retailers from the permit system. Under the version of the bill approved on June 14th, only a select few retailers outside of the state of California may even apply for a permit.
This is WRONG. The proposed permit system MUST provide for the ability of all retail licensees (wherever located) to participate freely. If retailers outside of CA are excluded from the CA market system, other states would retaliate by excluding California retailers from their markets. The goal of the bill was to encourage the creation of a national system of permits and licenses that provides the opportunity for every licensed merchant to participate, no matter where that merchant is located. This would be in the interest of all consumers, whether in CA or elsewhere.
Retailers in all states invest significant sums of money in inventory from multiple winery and importer sources. Retailers hold that inventory (often for years) and make it available in a convenient way to consumers who know and trust the merchant. Those customers could be across the street or across the country. That is the reality of the current market, especially for the expensive, limited production and usually allocated, collectible wines from California and the rest of the world. Requiring these wines to go back up through the three-tier system after they have already traversed it once (if they even could, currently they would just be unavailable outside of California, or unavailable to California if they are located in another state) would give the wholesalers a double profit margin; certainly good for the wholesalers, but not very good for the retailer or for the consumer. Who pays? You bet that the consumer pays.
The Supreme Court in the Granholm case condemned state laws that discriminated against out-of-state interests in favor of identically situated in-state interests. This statute would perpetuate discrimination WITHIN the California market by attempting to keep retailers from outside of California OUT of the market. While we think that any such effort would be unconstitutional as to retailers outside of California under Granholm, we do not want to fight the statute after it is written. Our goal is to make sure that the statute doesn't get passed with that flaw in the first place!
The interests of the wholesale tier, by proposing to take retail licensees out of the statute, is NOT to benefit California retailers by keeping them safe from competition from outside of the state. It is aimed at PREVENTING California retailers from servicing customers outside of California unless the transaction is run through the wholesale tier at a significant cost. Their goal is to have this bill emulated throughout the US. If California creates a discriminatory licensing or permit scheme, the wholesalers will use that example as a bludgeon in every other legislature in the US to keep those markets closed to California retailers.
The proposed bill can be found online at: http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/bills/SB_118
There is a link on that page for you to take action and contact legislators about the bill, or you can go directly to: http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/act/billletter.html?bill=sb_118&cmtehouse=A&cmte=GOVERNMENTAL+ORGANIZATION
Most importantly - spread the word about this proposed bill. For a wine lover or wine retailer this is special interest politics at its worst.
I'm sure they are doing it for the children.
Click to be added or removed.Wine ping.
Ping.
Follow the money. This is about taxes and a trade group trying to save their jobs.
IF wine, beer, etc is allowed to come in from other states, it is possible (probable?) that Michigan residents will import their hooch from sources outside of Michigan that won't impose various taxes on the sales. In other words, people like me will order a case of fine wine direct from a winery and will save a bunch due as I cut out the wholeseller (the people who are part of this story), the retailer, and oh yea, the tax man.
The old law made it easy to audit the books for the Michigan wineries. If the sale was made, one assumed it was to a Michigan resident, and therefore, taxes must be paid and Michigan laws followed.
The idea behind it was to encourage free trade amongst the several states without undue restrictions, taxes and tariffs...
Something is wrong here. The Supreme Court can't "give" a trade association the choice to outlaw anything.
S(wine).
This is an interesting picture. Multiple Midwestern states are now bucking SCOTUS in this game playing. They are acting like teacher's unions. These wines suck on a good day. This state MI (among others) is playing protectionist measures for crap product looking for glory. To be sure it is important to support crops. Grow cherries, OK?
But this impetus seems to have the legislature in the sack, else this movement would have died. Beware folks, the leftist, protectionist, socialists, are in your wine glass. And it will have an effect on quality.
Driving another industry out of their state. Then watch the Dem politicians blame cheap third world labor, for the loss of jobs and opportunity.
Btw personally I think professional associations, trade associations and politicians involved in these type of scams should be tried and hanged under treason/grand theft laws.
Which of course they couldn't literally do anymore. But why not do something like impose an annual per capita quantity limit on direct winery shipment sales.
What are the morons in Lansing thinking? Even Florida, which bans the shipment of ALL alcohol through the mail, makes an exception for in-state wineries (that is if you really want to have Florida Blanc du Bois, probably the worst wine I have ever tasted).
So what would have been wrong with making the wineries distributors?