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If the state wants to make more money selling liquor, it should make changes to ABC boards and alcohol laws, evaluators with the General Assembly say.

“Selling liquor is important to North Carolina’s economy,” Carol Shaw, an evaluator working for the General Assembly, told legislators.

Selling hard liquor and fortified wine generated $730 million in retail sales during the past fiscal year, Shaw said. Of that, about $250 million in profits and taxes went to fund state and local governments.

Liquor sales are overseen by the state Alcohol Beverage Control Commission and 158 local boards that run liquor stores in individual communities. Five counties are dry, but other counties have multiple local ABC boards.

While some of those stores outperform their private-industry counterparts in other states, others barely scrape by or lose money.
Greensboro runs the largest ABC operation in Guilford County and is the 18th most profitable in the state, according to the report. It distributed $3.6 million to local governments in 2007.

High Point, the state’s 56th most profitable ABC system, now serves High Point and Jamestown after the local boards merged recently. Gibsonville’s ABC system is the state’s 131st most profitable and cleared just $586,369 in fiscal year 2007, according to the report.

The Forsyth County system runs a store in Oak Ridge.

After hearing Shaw’s report, legislators on the Program Evaluation Oversight Committee ordered that her recommendations be drafted into law for consideration by House and Senate committees next year.

Among those recommendations:

• Giving the state ABC Commission more power to assist and regulate local ABC boards and to order consolidation among boards when it becomes apparent greater efficiency is needed.
• Creating a mission statement for local boards that includes maximizing profits and controlling the flow of liquor.
• Increasing the size of towns allowed to have liquor store referendums from 500 people to 5,000.
• Eliminating a prohibition-era law that requires transportation permits for large quantities of liquor, beer and wine.

State ABC Commission administrator Michael Herring said he thought North Carolina’s system was working well but concurred with the reports findings and recommendations.

A final section of the report pointed out that North Carolina is the only state where local ABC boards operate stores. That is a state function in Virginia and Pennsylvania. In Maine and Ohio, private stores contract with the state to sell liquor.

Legislators may, Shaw said, want to look at replacing the system for selling alcohol.

Skip Warren, chairman of the Greensboro ABC board, said he had not seen the program evaluators’ report and would not comment until he did.

Merging smaller ABC operations could be a good idea, said Sylvia Hoffner, chairman of Gibsonville’s ABC Board since the town opened its single store in 1989. Each ABC board needs to have its own warehouse, general manager and annual audit. Hoffner said those costs eat up profits for smaller operations.

Hoffner said she has approached larger ABC operations about taking in Gibsonville’s system. But neither system was willing to offer guarantees of returning revenue to Gibsonville or keeping the town’s store open rather than closing or relocating it to a more heavily traveled area.

The Rev. Mark Creech, who leads the Christian Action League, said some of the recommendations could be helpful. His group advocates  control on the sale of alcohol.

Creech said he was concerned about the emphasis on profitability.

“Alcohol is not an ordinary commodity,” he said. “It does pose a significant public health risk. If we move to more a profit approach, then control will be sacrificed.”

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com