Article by Erik Smith. Published on Tuesday, June 16, 2010 EST.
Ante Goes Up in Liquor-Store Fight – Unions Start Kicking in Money, Too
By Erik Smith
Staff writer/ Washington State Wire
OLYMPIA, June 15.—Latest filings with the state Public Disclosure Commission show the ante is going up in the battle over privatizing Washington state’s liquor stores.
Costco, the Issaquah-based wholesale-retailer, has kicked in another $185,000 in cash for Initiative 1100, bringing its total of cash and indirect contributions to the measure to $642,000. The contribution was recorded last week but showed up on the PDC website Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, unions are starting to fight back. The same fresh batch of PDC reports show that the United Food and Commercial Workers Union has kicked in $38,000 to the general campaign against privatization of state liquor sales, which calls itself Keep Our Kids Safe. Of that amount, $33,000 comes from UFCW local 21, which represents nearly 1,000 workers in the state-controlled liquor stores. Another $5,000 comes from UFCW Washington.
Initiative 1100 would close the state’s liquor stores and allow hard-liquor sales by stores with beer and wine licenses. It is one of two liquor-store privatization initiative campaigns collecting signatures to place the issue on this November’s ballot. Also in the field is Initiative 1105, backed by liquor distributors, which would require retailers to purchase liquor from distributors. The Costco-backed measure would allow retailers to purchase directly from manufacturers and would cut out the middleman.
No new contributions to that second measure have shown up since last week, when two liquor distributors contributed $400,000.
Over the weekend, Costco stopped collecting signatures for I-1100 in its stores – a possible sign that the campaign may already have reached its goal of 300,000 signatures. The Modernize Washington campaign, the formal organization behind the measure, won’t confirm or deny whether it has hit the target, and continues to collect signatures statewide.
Initiative campaigns have until July 2 to collect 241,000 valid signatures – though state elections officials advise initiative campaigns to collect 300,000 because many signatures typically are found to be invalid.Your support matters.
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