Just when you think the state Republican Party is doing the right thing on spending, fiscal responsibility and our constitutional rights (specifically our Second Amendment rights), then they go off and do what James Wigderson describes:

 The Joint Finance Committee (JFC), in a move designed to stifle competition with MillerCoors from Anheuser-Busch, adopted as part of the state budget changes in the way beer can be distributed in Wisconsin. The biggest change in the law would prevent brewers from owning beer distributorships. …

Craft brewers would still be allowed to do their own distribution under the proposed law. However, they would not be able to purchase or start up a distributor company that could sell other brands of beer. This means that small craft brewers cannot band together to start their own distributorship, as some have proposed. …

The law would also create set the minimum number of retail customers at 25 before a potential distributor could apply for a wholesale license. That is clearly an anti-competitive move to prevent new distributorships from starting up, a concern again for craft brewers. Instead of being able to sell their products to five or six stores to get their business going, they will face a much steeper number of customers requiring greater initial costs.

Imagine any other business trying to start out being told they have to have a minimum number of customers before they can actually open their doors. It’s as if both parties in the legislature think a business can only be started if it’s promoted by Groupon.

Craft brewers would also lose their ability to have retail licenses. Instead of being able to set up small tap rooms that would feature their product as well as the products of other craft brewers, the new law would prevent the craft brewer from setting up more than a location at the brewery to sell their product and one other location. It would also prevent craft breweries from selling their retail locations if they become successful entities.

The law also prevents wholesalers from investing in craft brewers, but it does not prevent wholesalers from investing in publicly traded breweries. Under the proposed change to the law, craft brewers would be effectively cut off from a source of capital from a group of investors that would know their products best.

Read Wigderson’s piece to become inundated in the minutiae of beer distributing. The two important points:

Here is the problem with including public policy issues in the budget process rather than deal with them separately. While some would argue that limiting competition may protect jobs, others would argue that opening up the brewing industry to more competition will produce more jobs. Including the policy change as one small item in a much larger state budget prevents the needed public policy discussion needed before legislators consider voting on it.

It’s also a problem with trying to pick economic winners and losers as government policy, something Governor Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans campaigned against last year. Protectionism for one large brewer that still has extensive operations in Wisconsin despite moving its corporate headquarters to Chicago can have an adverse affect on those smaller breweries that just might be the next big job provider of the future.

Wisconsin’s craft brewers are just 5% of the state’s beer market right now. However, it’s an industry that’s growing. Nationally craft brewers grew 11% last year. Wisconsin is poised to take advantage of that trend but only if it encourages more competition and more opportunities for growth for the state’s craft brewers.

This is being described on (the left-wing) Facebook as, of course, “Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s War on Craft Beer.” Which is an interesting claim given how hard Democrats have worked to make Wisconsin a bad place to do business, including craft brewing. Since Walker was Milwaukee County executive before he became governor, he seems unlikely to have had much role in the health lobby’s war on alcohol, disguised as campaigning against drunk driving. Walker also did not sign into law the statewide smoking ban that is going to drive out of business taverns that sell craft beer; that was the doing of Walker’s predecessor as governor and the previous Legislature.

In addition to being an excellent example of how the Law of Unintended Consequences applies to all political parties, this legislation is the adult-beverage example of what the Doyle administration did for years to its favored industries, namely the “clean energy” industry. It is wrong for government to take sides to promote one business at the expense of its competition, no matter which party’s idea it is. Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and craft brewers should swim or sink based on their product and service to their customers, not on government carrots or sticks.