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A legislative report says the first priority of the state’s ABC system ought to be “optimizing profitability.”

Customers might not agree with that. Nor would everyone support recommendations aimed at shifting more control from local ABC boards to Raleigh and denying very small towns the chance to participate.

ABC stands for Alcoholic Beverage Control. The state’s 71-year-old system serves several good purposes. It makes sure that liquor stores are professionally operated and located in appropriate places, that managers abide by the law and that profits support public purposes. All one has to do to appreciate them is to see dingy liquor stores crowding inner cities in some other states.

However, “control” is only the fifth item listed on a new mission statement proposed by the legislative Program Evaluation Division. The first is making money. Two of the recommendations for boosting profits are to empower the state ABC Commission to order mergers of local systems, and to change state law to prohibit towns with fewer than 5,000 registered voters from opening their own ABC stores.

Many small towns struggle to operate ABC stores efficiently, the report noted — although some manage to take customers from larger neighboring cities. Greensboro and Summerfield avoided those problems after Summerfield voters passed an ABC referendum in 2005. The town then agreed to run a merged system with Greensboro. There’s one store in Summerfield today.

Some small towns may not lie close enough to a larger city for a merger to be practical, however, while others might want to go it alone as other small towns have in the past. It seems unfair to deny them for the reason that they might not make enough money.

Similarly, the state ABC Commission will have too much power if it can order mergers of local boards that it deems earn too little money, as the report recommends.

ABC stores shouldn’t operate at a loss. The state should monitor them for signs of mismanagement.

But, as Greensboro and Summerfield showed, local people can work out issues without orders from the state.