Michigan's State-Run Liquor Monopoly Fails Brilliantly

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Governments are terrible at certain things. Picking winners and losers, for example (cronies usually win). Or running state-sanctioned monopolies, like those for alcohol sales and distribution.

In states like Michigan, where the government has a monopoly on the wholesaling of hard liquor, there has been an inventory problem. A rather big one. The attorney general’s office conducted an audit of operations and discovered more than 62,000 bottles of booze worth roughly $1 million were missing.

As the Center Square’s Scott MacClallan reports, that’s just the beginning of the problems at the Michigan Liquor Control Commission:

The audit found the agency “lacked key controls” and inventory oversight, which at one point resulted in a negative inventory of nearly 900,000 bottles.

The value of the missing bottles totaled nearly $1 million, more than 20% of its total inventory. The MLCC could not provide any information about the missing supply and refunded all vendors for the missing bottles.

How an agency “loses” track of 900,000 of alcohol is incredible. It almost makes the 62,000 that are truly “missing’ seem like a vast improvement over a massive bureaucratic snafu.

But what else did the auditor find?  Nothing good:

The audit revealed that the MLCC failed to keep adequate sale and purchase records.

From February 2021 to August 2022, $1.1 billion in spirit orders weren’t filed in the state’s online ordering system. The MLCC also gave liquor licenses to three organizations prohibited from selling alcohol. Sales from these three businesses totaled $272,139 from Jan. 1, 2018, to Aug. 5, 2022.

It’s almost as if the agency can’t be bothered to do its job. And to make a bad situation worse, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whom some on Team Blue believe could be a future Democratic presidential contender, wants to cut the auditor’s budget.

Because nothing says “accountability” quite like getting rid of the accountants, their investigators, and the means they have of safeguarding taxpayer resources.

Well, played, Gov. Whitmer. That move ought to play really well in an opposition TV ad. 

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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