When I arrived at the Hartford Business Journal, my initial strategy was incremental.
I would launch a sports section, add columns about chess and bridge, include a weekly review of the “best all-you-can-eat buffets at which you could discuss business with clients,” and, of course, the “hottest actuaries looking for a date” profiles. This would be done, slowly and carefully, in the first two weeks of my arrival.
But, of course, things move even more slowly in a giant media organization, controlled as it is by a Cayman Islands holding company that prefers cautious cash cows. My incremental approach was frightening; I was “put on hold” and assigned merely to write one of the world’s greatest columns about almost everything.
At many business organizations, that challenge exists for almost every new senior executive. Do you immediately slash and burn and change the color of the sign on the front lawn and hire 15 circus clowns to provide “customer service,” or do you slowly and cautiously change the fabric on the walls of the office cubicles?
Of course, the instinct would be to run amok if you were taking over a basket-case enterprise and move slowly if the ship-of-state was sailing along just fine. But, you never know. Eastman Kodak sank slowly, didn’t it?
Even project-by-project, the decision must be made: 30-days-and-out, or a long, careful, incremental process so subtle than folks won’t even be aware that it’s happening.
Even for projects of modest consequence, a decision must be made about whether to inflict comprehensive mayhem, or nibbling-at-the-edges reform.
And so it is with Gov. Dannel Malloy, who has announced an initiative to reform Connecticut’s hilarious, anti-consumer liquor laws; to turn the special-interest-dominated, monopolistic, price-fixed, uncompetitive monstrosity inside out — so that we can all drink ourselves into a reasonably priced stupor, without government interference.
Almost every state is riddled with liquor-law idiosyncrasies, but Connecticut has been among the most creative in its ability to deprive consumers of virtually every market option that might save them a few bucks on alcohol. No below-cost loss leaders. Minimum pricing. No liquor-store chains. No wine and liquor sold anywhere except liquor stores. Peculiar, monopoly-ridden wholesale distribution (aided and abetted by the federal government).
And, of course, Connecticut is one of the dwindling number of states that prohibits liquor sales on Sundays — a little gift to the mom-and-pop liquor stores that prefer the day off, as long as no competitor is allowed to come back from church and sell you a bottle of whiskey.
The Sunday-sale legislation has come up before, invariably to be dragged out back by liquor-store lobbyists and drowned in a vat of gin. The question for Malloy becomes whether the Sunday vacation day is so important to the liquor stores that it should be offered up as a separate piece of legislation — quite apart from whether the XYZ Liquor Store will be allowed to open up 75 storefront joints and sell a six-pack of Bud for $1.99, just to get you in the store.
It’s an interesting legislative dilemma. Clearly, the Sunday sales ban is the most irritating and easiest to understand by the average thirsty voter. That suggests it should be the kingpin of the entire liquor deregulation initiative.
On the other hand, the more obscure pieces of the puzzle might have an easier time getting through the legislative factory, without the burden of the liquor stores whining about sleeping late on Sundays.
Incremental? All at once? That’s something to mull over a bottle of Scotch. Purchased on a Thursday.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
