OCEAN CITY — With little fanfare, Worcester’s beleaguered Department of Liquor Control quietly went away on July 1, save for one retail outlet still under county control in Pocomoke, and the final tally on the losses were not as bad as anticipated.
Worcester County Commissioner Joe Mitrecic, who represents Ocean City, on Monday gave the Mayor and Council a briefing on recent issues in the county germane to the resort. Mitrecic, long an advocate for dismantling the red-ink bleeding Department of Liquor Control (DLC), said Worcester was finally out of the booze business with just one retail store still under county control until an approved private sector buyer can take it over.
“As you know, the county is out of the liquor business as of July 1 of this year,” he said. “There was a little hiccup with the Pocomoke store, so the county is still operating that store until somebody takes it over.”
The DLC was created in 2014 after the often-controversial Liquor Control Board (LCB) was dissolved. In the years since, the county-run DLC operated several retail stores throughout Worcester along with a wholesale operation for the several hundred licensees. However, the stiff competition from private-sector wholesalers along with a stream of red ink totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, the County Commissioners last year devised an exit strategy for getting out of the liquor business.
County officials anticipated taking short-term losses totaling millions of dollars as it liquidated inventory at deep discounts, sold off facilities including warehouses and retail stores and other measures associated with dismantling the DLC. However, Mitrecic said when all was said and done with the issue surrounding the Pocomoke store still to resolve, the losses came in considerably lower than expected, thanks in large part to the staff’s efforts after the former director resigned last year.
“With the sale of that store and the warehouse, it looks like it’s going to end up costing the taxpayers around $200,000 to get out of the liquor business,” he said. “That sounds like a lot of money, but that’s about half of what it would cost us a year in losses to run the department.”
Mitrecic said despite the anticipated $200,000 loss, the final total was much more palatable than the gloomy picture painted by the former director. He said there is a possibility that number could go even lower depending on how the Pocomoke issue is resolved.
“That’s a far cry from the $3 million to $5 million the former director told us it was going to cost the county to get out of the liquor business,” he said. “The county staff that took over after the director left did a great job in liquidating a lot of the liquor and avoiding greater losses. It’s good it worked out this way. Hopefully, it will be even less than $200,000.”
