Costco Wholesale stores in Washington will begin collecting signatures next week to put an initiative on the ballot in November that would take the state out of the liquor business.
Initiative 1100 would allow businesses in good standing that currently sell beer and wine to also sell liquor, and it would eliminate price controls and allow volume discounts.
The push comes more than two years after Issaquah-based Costco, the country’s third-largest retailer, lost most aspects of a court battle to change the state’s beer- and wine-distribution rules.
Several legislative efforts aimed at overhauling the system failed to make headway.
“Some things are politically very difficult to change through a legislature,” said Costco’s chief legal officer, Joel Benoliel. “There are so many stakeholders with entrenched roles in this, whether it’s distributors or others.”
He said some law enforcement and temperance representatives also oppose letting retailers like Costco sell liquor.
John Guadnola, executive director of the Washington Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association, said the group does not have an official position on the initiative but that he personally opposes it because it would dismantle the current regulatory system.
Price controls and other regulations minimize alcohol abuse and related problems like domestic violence, he said.
“In Great Britain, they’re selling beer as loss leaders in grocery stores,” Guadnola said. “It’s easy access to alcohol, and the lower the price, the more the consumption.”
Small grocery stores like the idea of selling liquor but say Initiative 1100 goes too far.
“This would allow very large retailers to acquire and sell alcohol at a price that many of our family-owned grocers would not be able to compete with,” said Jan Gee, president and CEO of the Washington Food Industry Association, which represents independent, family-owned grocers.
Others are concerned that the state would have trouble making up for the money generated by its liquor stores, about $655 million of which went to the state in fiscal 2008 and 2009.
The state runs more than 160 stores, and another 155 are owned by businesses that contract with the state.
To make the November ballot, the initiative needs almost 242,000 signatures by July 2.
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