Just How Many Laws Can The Liquor Dispensary Break?

Let me start with this. They hadn't reported their monthly figures to the Council for the past 6 1/2 years! They showed financial reports every two years, not every year and they stopped informing the Council six and a half years ago. This was part of their guidelines that they had to report earnings every month and they have refused. Once the Council recently demanded they do so, they finally started giving them numbers. I should add, it was stated clearly, "Reports were recently delivered, yet they were very sketchy." By law, these reports were also supposed to be printed in the local Newspaper.

The State of Maryland demanded that ANYONE selling liquor had to be TAM or TIPS Certified. GET THIS! None of them were Certified BY LAW from October of 2006 to May 8, 2008! In other words, they were breaking the law for all those years.

Their agreement with the County was that they would provide "any" size bottle to resellers and they flat out refused to do so.

Here's one of the big things I found unbelievable. The Dispensary was supposed to work off of a 14% mark up. However, what they were doing instead is, they were working off of the RETAIL price of a bottle of liquor and then discounting it 14%! Let me give you an example of how it worked. Let's just say they would sell a bottle of liquor for $10.00. The would mark it down 14% to $8.60 to a local Bar. HOWEVER, let's say, (and this happens on most of the products they purchase) the Dispensary would buy that bottle of liquor on sale from the distributor in massive bulk twice a year. So they'd purchase that bottle for lets say $5.50 a bottle. That's NOT a 14% mark up!

Statements were made in this meeting, "The system is ripe for abuse." My biggest concern right now with this whole thing is, the Dispensary is spending thousands upon thousands of dollars promoting why they should stay independent from the County privatizing the sale of liquor, yet there's no one out there educating the Public as to why it's actually hurting the Taxpayers financially and certainly the Bars and Restaurants reselling liquor at their locations.

Mr. Calvin Mitchell represents 4 local VFW locations and stated they could walk across the street from their Delmar, Maryland location and purchase liquor for at least 50% less than the Wicomico Dispensary, NOT including the 6% tax Maryland charges on each bottle!

Sadly, if you were to poll the citizens of Wicomico County and ask them who they buy their liquor from, they would more than likely state they buy it from Wicomico County. This is absolutely not true and the Dispensary is giving the County a bad name.

There's no accountability and they're completely autonomous. My guess is that this special task force that was recently created will strongly suggest the County in fact take this to referendum and let the Taxpayers choose what they want. However, the language has to be very creative to assure the taxpayers know what they're voting for.

The Dispensary, (like I said earlier) is spending YOUR tax dollars to plead their own case by threatening your costs will go up if the system is privatized. That's just not true. Bars, Restaurants and Liquor Stores would be able to take advantage of bulk prices and the business would then become competitive enough where I'd say your pricing will easily come way down.

I'm sure GA will be chiming in on his opinion about this meeting today but let me add, NO ONE from the Dispensary came to this meeting nor the two previous to this one. They didn't even send in their attorney.

It should also be noted. One of the Restaurant Owners stated that they truly don't believe many of the Bars and Restaurants you see locally will be around next year. Sales are dropping fast because of the economy and at the rate their paying to purchase liquor from the Dispensary, many places will be closing. What I find interesting about that statement is, here's the Dispensary crying about all the jobs they'd be losing, yet they couldn't care less about PRIVATE people who have put up evverything they own just to survive. There will be far more people out of jobs and the economy will feel a much bigger impact losing all these businesses than simply closing down the Dispensaries.

In closing, they created this board to look into ways, (should they choose to privatize the system) to create enough money so as they will not lose revenue from the sale of alcohol and today they have come up with a way to do so. That information will come later but it should be known, it can be done without any of the business owners complaining.