Flying Dog flies away, bad policy to blame

The FNP’s UnCapped podcast reports:

“FX Matt Brewing Company and Flying Dog Brewery today announced that FX Matt Brewing Company is acquiring Flying Dog and is in the process of looking for a location for a Flying Dog taproom, to include an innovation brewery, in Frederick, MD.

FX Matt Brewing Company, founded in 1888 and the 4th longest-running family-owned brewery in the United States, has been brewing many of Flying Dog’s beers over the last ten years due to limitations at Flying Dog’s Frederick brewery. Flying Dog will shift all production to FX Matt over the course of the summer and is expected to cease operations sometime in August. This will be a seamless transition with all Flying Dog beers being brewed at FX Matt Brewing in New York until a taproom and innovation brewery opens in Frederick.”

A few years ago I followed the struggles in Annapolis over whether the General Assembly would relax and modernize antiquated Maryland laws that insulate beer wholesalers and other established businesses from competition so as to give independent brewers a fair chance. The wrong side (i. e. the incumbents seeking to protect their “three-tier” market position) won. And now arrives the predicted and foreseen consequence: Frederick is losing perhaps its premier business, Flying Dog Brewery, which will be brewed and managed from New York. (We’ll get some sort of “innovation brewery” as a consolation prize.)

More from the Baltimore Sun:

Flying Dog, the state’s largest producer of craft beer, had put major expansion plans on hold in 2017 because of legislation regarding state brewery regulations, Caruso said at the time. The brewing company had bought nearly 32 acres of farmland near Frederick Municipal Airport for $2.55 million to create a brewery five times the size of its current 50,000-square-foot facility.”

From the press release: “Frederick is a great place to live and do business. Unfortunately, even though we have invested millions of dollars in the [old] brewery, it has too many limitations and puts Flying Dog at too great a competitive disadvantage.”

Politics shouldn’t matter so much in our lives, but it does.

In miniature, April 2

• Rent controls have compiled an immensely destructive record, as most economists agree. Yet the Montgomery County Council continues down the path to rental shortages, deterioration of the housing stock, and injustice. Turn back! [Adam Pagnucco series]
• Frederick County “has a suggested ‘Responsible [Liquor] Sales Policy’ that… recommends that business mandate that ‘no employee will accept a vertical identification card.'” That’s not actually what state law requires, though [Emma Camp, Reason]
• Mad Libs scandal headlines: “Maryland State Police medical director resigns, faces discipline for affiliation with erectile dysfunction clinic” [Justin Fenton, Baltimore Banner]
• It still counts as a nice day for me professionally when the Washington Post publishes an editorial (on ranked choice voting) that not only endorses a cause I like, but cites my work in doing so [more].
• As the Pimlico deal gets more costly, the state of Maryland should still extricate itself [Brian Griffiths, The Duckpin]
• For democracy’s sake, we need special elections: “One committee has placed 35% of Montgomery County’s General Assembly delegation in current seats” [Steve Bohnel, MoCo360]

Alcohol restrictionists plot against Franchot; Flying Dog scraps Frederick expansion

Public health nannies, big alcohol lobbyists and intraparty rivals are all gunning for Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot, so I figure he must be doing something right. Danielle Gaines reports.

To spell out what Franchot is doing right, he’s been pursuing a pro-consumer, pro-market, pro-competition agenda that would ease the way for craft beer and wine producers and other newcomers to offer buyers more choices at lower prices. Public health nannies like those at Hopkins’s Bloomberg Center don’t like that because they think drinks should be more expensive and harder to get, for your own good you understand. Big alcohol lobbyists don’t like it because their business model is premised on maintaining scarcer and more expensive choices with less competition. And intraparty rivals don’t like it because Franchot — though a Democrat of a rather liberal stripe — is happy to cooperate with Republicans like Gov. Larry Hogan to get things done.

Meanwhile, faced with intractable resistance among the majority legislative leadership in Annapolis to modernizing and easing craft beer regulations, Flying Dog Brewery has bailed out on its plans for a big expansion in east Frederick and put the land up for sale. Bad law has consequences.

In miniature, June 5

• Washington Post editorial board applauds Gov. Hogan’s veto of a shameless power grab by the state’s teachers’ unions;
• Montgomery County might elect a decades-long socialist as its next county executive. Does that matter much? [The Seventh State: Adam Pagnucco, Marc Elrich response, David Lublin, Marc Elrich response]
• Becomes law without governor’s signature: bad measure guaranteeing to union fruits of previous contract even after it expires [Glynis Kazanjian, Maryland Reporter]
• Bill in last assembly session would have required colleges to implement “hate-bias” prevention programs, adopt mandatory training of 1st-years [Aryssa Damron, College Fix; met with unfavorable report from Appropriations]
• Budget-busting disability mandate: “Annapolis should keep hands off local pensions” [Ken Decker, Maryland Reporter]
• MoCo: “Co-Owner of Closing Restaurant Blasts Liquor Monopoly” [Adam Pagnucco, The Seventh State]

In miniature, May 10

• Baltimore city schools, which say they can’t afford to heat buildings adequately in winter, have 44 employees who earn more than Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan [Chris Papst, WBFF] “School bus driver in fatal 2016 crash was involved in at least a dozen collisions or medical emergencies in the five years prior.” [Scott Dance, Baltimore Sun]
• Good question: “Why did Republicans Oppose Free Market Alcohol Reforms?” [Brian Griffiths, Red Maryland]
• Metro’s misery: “ATU Local 689 has fought against firing track inspectors who falsified inspection reports and put public safety at risk.” [David Lublin]
• “Free Speech Index: Grading the 50 States on Political Giving Freedom” Alas, Maryland ranks 46th and gets an F. [Institute for Free Speech]
• College Park, Hyattsville prepare to let non-citizens vote. Illegals too? [Sapna Rampersaud, NRO]
• “Opinion: A tipped server from Seattle says Madaleno’s $15 minimum wage bill cuts incomes” [Simone Barron, Maryland Reporter] “The unintended victims of a $15 minimum wage are small businesses and their employees” [Mike O’Halloran, NFIB]

In miniature, December 21

• “We’re going to overturn every rock in their lives to find out about their lifestyles” — Montgomery County liquor monopoly union chief Gino Renne, on his adversaries in the legislature [Bethesda Magazine “Bethesda Beat”]
• Relatedly, no wonder Chinese is MoCo’s strong suit dining-wise: county booze system strangles higher-end eateries [Dave McIntyre, Washington Post]
• Virginia plans to cut corporate tax rate, putting yet more pressure on Maryland to reduce its business tax burden [Baltimore Sun]
• BaltimoreLink bus plan from Hogan administration “far sounder” than costly Red Line rail-based model [Nick Zaiac, Maryland Public Policy Institute, summary and paper]
• Kelly Schulz, Chris Shank, Boyd Rutherford among those who participated in conference on Maryland prisoner re-entry put on by my old colleagues at the Manhattan Institute;
• Guns and homeland defense: revisiting the story of the Maryland Minute Men of 1942 [Dave Kopel]

Montgomery County liquor monopoly

According to David Lublin and Adam Pagnucco at Seventh State, Montgomery County’s government liquor monopoly, under attack by Comptroller Peter Franchot and others, makes a broad and inviting target: it’s deeply unpopular with the public, not really needed for revenue, and its reform offers an opening for political newcomers, what with most of the incumbent council choosing to side against consumer interests and with MCGEO, which represents county store workers and “acts like a union out of Republican central casting, attempting to bully its opponents into submission.”

“Montgomery County is the last bastion of a medieval state system”

“We’re probably the worst, most regulated county in the entire country” on alcohol sales: Comptroller Peter Franchot has a thing or two to say about the need for Montgomery County to ditch its county-run liquor system (via). The Seventh State has run an illuminating exchange on the subject lately, and Bethesda Magazine has details of a partial privatization plan.

Western Maryland in the Whiskey Rebellion

“In the ensuing 1794 Whiskey Rebellion…the locus for noncompliance and violence against tax agents was largely western Pennsylvania, but not entirely. Early local newspapers reported disturbances, such as the erection of 1776-style townsquare liberty poles, in Cumberland, Hagerstown, and Middletown….At one point, even Frederick was tense — rumor had ‘the Whiskey Boys’ headed that way, to empty its state arsenal of weapons.” — James H. Bready, “Maryland Rye: A Whiskey the Nation Long Fancied — But Now Has Let Vanish,” Maryland Historical Magazine, Winter 1990. “To a legion of fanciers, the best Maryland Rye was on a par with whatever else might be nominated as the ne plus ultra of American whiskey.”

In miniature, March 27

• Pro and con on Purple Line: Randal O’Toole on flaws [Maryland Public Policy Institute, Maryland Reporter; Richard Parsons]
• Good: “Dram Shop Liability Likely Dead For Another Year in Maryland” [Brett Buckwalter, Niles, Barton, & Wilmer]
• “Anti-drug-overdose compound could save lives but counsel for the Maryland State Medical Society told a panel in Annapolis that doctors fear liability should they prescribe it.” [Overlawyered]
• “She’s the right gender” to run for Senator, it’s said of Rep. Donna Edwards. Hadn’t realized there was a wrong gender [Glynis Kazanjian, Maryland Reporter]
• Oh, oh, O’Malley: “Maryland should repay nearly $30M due to Obamacare reporting error: HHS IG” [Washington Times]
• Police misconduct no biggie, testifies a former P.G. sheriff, which brings the irony given his record [Radley Balko]