A subsidy for the Erie Times-News

The Erie Times-News never saw a government subsidy for a special interest it didn’t like, especially when it offers the prospect of big advertising contracts and revenues for the newspaper.

As so it is with the promotional campaign it has launched in its editorial and news columns this week on behalf of the Pennsylvania Winery Assn., a group of about 80 affluent vintners from throughout the state who are seeking a $12 million handout from the state to finance an “aggressive” wine marketing and research program.

A subsidy for the area wineries is, by indirection, a subsidy for the Times-News which would eventually get a healthy chunk of the local wineries’s advertising, paid for by part of the $2 million handout.

It’s interesting to note that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week ran an almost identical article just a few days before the Times-News did, using pretty much the same rationale and data the local paper did, quoting the same winery spokesperson saying exactly the same things. The blitz is on.

The lobbying group says one of its aims is to “level the ground” between the huge wine industry in neighboring New York and the much smaller one here in Pennsylvania to enable Pennsylvania to compete on equal terms.

The notion of equalizing the wine industries in the two states at any cost is ludicrous. New York’s has been established for nearly a century, and has far more favorable climatic and soil conditions just in the famed Finger Lakes region in central New York, its largest vinifera growing region, than Pennsylvania has throughout the entire state.

One can’t blame the PWA for seeking a $2 million gift from the state to boost its constituents’ wine sales so that they may keep as profit the revenue they would otherwise have to pay for advertising and quality control. But the state shouldn’t be giving money away to one special interest simply because it’s a heavy advertiser,unless it gives it away to all of them, including the mom and pop store on the corner, which isn’t.