Va. legislators want to squeeze more revenue from ABC cash cow
Faced with a $1.26 billion revenue shortfall and an overriding commitment to a raise for state employees, the General Assembly has fallen back on a reliable strategy for finding money — take it from ABC.
The budgets the Senate and House of Delegates proposed last week would take an additional $22.6 million in profits from the state liquor monopoly — on top of an additional $15.6 million in ABC revenue that Gov. Terry McAuliffe included in the budget he presented to the legislature in December.
The budget proposals pose a challenge for the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, which not only might not grow fast enough to meet the higher revenue targets, but also has to pay a proposed 3 percent raise for its 3,278 employees and potentially make cuts in its operations to avoid hiking the price of liquor in state stores.
“It’s the double whammy of increasing revenue and then paying the salary increase,” said Travis G. Hill, chief operating officer of ABC.
Read more: http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/general-assembly/va-legislators-want-to-squeeze-more-revenue-from-abc-cash/article_934fccc5-b002-5f5a-954c-9c2650e5e31f.html
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