Source: WBEN

Rachel Kingston

April 2nd

New York State's budget deadline has come and gone, and lawmakers failed to meet it. Now, without a budget in place, liquor store owners worry they could be the next casualty of the state's fiscal crisis.

Governor David Paterson's 2010-2011 fiscal year budget proposal includes a provision that would allow grocery stores to sell wine. The Senate and Assembly's proposals do not include that provision. Liquor retailers are concerned that the proposal will be worked back into the final budget plan, now that the pressure is on to get a budget in place as quickly as possible.

"Even though the Assembly and the Senate both rejected the Paterson plan... because they see that it would wind up putting 4500 people out of work and close more than a thousand stores, the supermarkets aren't letting it go," Mark Ressler, Vice President of the New York State Liquor Store Association, tells WBEN. "This isn't over until the budget's signed... so we're worried about a last-minute reversal."

Since many lawmakers hesitant to cut funding, Ressler fears they could end up viewing the franchise and license fees that would be collected from grocery stores if the proposal is enacted as an attractive alternative.

But what Ressler, other liquor retailers, and winery operators are most concerned about is the recent revelation that the governor's office de-commissioned a study that would have analyzed the economic impact of letting grocery stores sell wine.

According to Ressler, the Law Revision Committee - an independent panel - was originally commissioned to conduct the study by former Governor, Eliot Spitzer.

"Their job is to look at the liquor laws in the state and make recommendations of how to update them. And they said, they can't make a recommendation on wine going into grocery stores without an independent economic impact study. But in recent days, the chairman of the Law Revision Committee admitted, under oath, that the state Division of Budget killed its plans for an economic impact study, fearing that it would make plain the devastation that the plan would create for small businesses."

Ressler sees this as a deliberate attempt to undercut opponents of Paterson's proposal.

"This independent Law Revision Committee asked to do the study, set aside $200,00 and they were told not to do the study. And what they're indicating is that they were told not to do it because the results would wind up showing that it would cause mass devastation to liquor stores."