"A Hundred Miles of Dry"

Seems the number of dry counties in Texas is, um, drying up.

Since late 2003, when changes in state law made it easier to put alcohol on local ballots, there have been 177 elections across the state to legalize some form of alcohol sales. A lopsided 82 percent have passed, according to the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission.

Conversely, no wet areas have voted to go dry.

Today, only 42 of Texas' 254 counties are completely dry, fewer than half the number in 1975, when there were 87. And each year several more fall from the list. Located mostly in West Texas and the Panhandle, 28 of the state's dry counties have populations of fewer than 10,000.

Angelina County, with 82,036 residents, is the second-most-populous dry county in the state behind Smith County, population 188,122, and its chief city of Tyler.

"Beer and wine in grocery stores and the possibility of a drink with a restaurant meal is what's in demand with most Texans," said Glen Garey, general counsel for the Texas Restaurant Association. "We don't get much push-back on those options."

[...]

"Getting on the ballot is everything," said Oscar Dillahunty, 69, a retired beer distributor who is leading alcohol proponents in Lufkin, a timber and manufacturing hub 120 miles north of Houston. "We'll have a campaign, but I don't think it will matter. Our poll shows two-thirds of people here are for this."

Dillahunty, whose committee has gathered campaign money from an area beer distributor, a grocery chain and Wal-Mart, among others, said sales taxes on at least $15 million worth of alcohol sales a year are being siphoned off by neighboring Nacogdoches and Trinity counties.

"That's something when we have a sheriff's department that needs raises," he said.

Kip Miller, president of Angelina Savings Bank, said, "From a businessman's standpoint, this is going to make it easier for us to attract restaurants and maybe an upscale grocery store, where you can pick up a bottle of wine and some real Parmesan cheese."

Then there are proponents such as Sarah Strinden and her husband, Bill, who calls the county's dry status "silly."

Bill Strinden, a plastic surgeon, said he has watched Lufkin's medical community grow from about 40 doctors when he arrived 18 years ago to 150 today.

"You can see tremendous growth here. We have a lot of the same stores they have in Dallas," he said. "But being a dry county is a throwback to a time when we were a backwater, small Southern town."

I'm hard pressed to think of a valid non-religious reason to oppose alcohol sales in a county. Restrictions I can understand, and not wanting to bother with legacy rules in certain neighborhoods (such as the Heights) also makes sense, but a wholesale ban on beer and wine? I don't get it.

I kind of see dry counties as an inefficiency in the market, which quickly gets worked around by the easy proximity of wet counties. You see stuff like this all the time. Back in the early 80s, New York State's drinking age was 21, but New Jersey's was 19. It's very easy to get to New Jersey from much of New York, and any kid who wanted to drink did just that. Similarly, there was a long period where New York's sales tax was significantly higher than New Jersey's (8.25 for NY versus 5 for NJ). If you'd visited the Woodbridge Mall back then, you'd have seen quite a few Empire State license plates in its parking lot. I guarantee that the people who least want to see Angelina County change its rules are Nacogdoches and Trinity Counties.

It's certainly possible that some counties, in particular the smaller ones out in West Texas, will stay dry for the long haul. I can't imagine that Angelina and Smith will resist the trend, though. I think there's too many people who expect to be able to buy things like a six pack at the local supermarket or a glass of Chardonnay at a restaurant for it to be viable, and the revenue argument is hard to counter. The folks who oppose alcohol on religious grounds are a distinct minority, and I think they know it.

(The title of this post refers to an Austin Lounge Lizards song, for which you can hear a Windows Media sample here. I daresay they'll be glad to toss this one on their "made obsolete by future events" pile.)

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 02, 2006 to The great state of Texas | TrackBack