Dominic Alaimo has been operating a package store in Enfield for the past 31 years, and he works long hours at his shop.
But Alaimo wants the option to work even harder – opening on Sundays because he says business drives right by his Freshwater Package Store at 920 Enfield Street on the way to the Massachusetts border.
Working seven days a week wouldn’t bother him, and he would certainly work on Sunday.
“Absolutely,” Alaimo said in an interview. “It’s a tough economy.”
On philosophical and practical grounds, Alaimo said he cannot understand the position of the Connecticut Package Stores Association, Gov. M. Jodi Rell, and Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele – who all oppose the sales of beer, wine, and hard liquor in package stores and supermarkets on Sundays. He rejects the idea that it has always been that way and that Sunday has traditionally been a day of rest.
“The government has no business telling us when we can open or close,” Alaimo said. “Bars are open. Restaurants are open. Car dealers are open. Shouldn’t them people rest, too?”
Massachusetts allows Sunday sales, and the steady stream of cars heads over the border on a regular basis – which Alaimo says hurts him and many other package stores near the border.
“My business is down 40 percent,” said Alaimo, whose store is on Route 5 near town hall. “We’re getting destroyed.”
An outspoken advocate of Sunday sales, Alaimo is an active Republican who ran unsuccessfully for a town council seat in the November 2009 election against longtime Democrat “Red” Edgar.
Alaimo traveled to the state Capitol complex Monday for a long-awaited hearing by the Program Review and Investigations Committee on whether the state should legalize the Sunday sales of alcohol. The package store association, led by executive director and lobbyist Carroll Hughes, has beaten back the proposal every year. They say that Sunday sales would not increase the state’s tax collections because alcohol sales would be spread out over seven days, rather than six. The volume would not go up, taxes would remain the same, and the store owners would be forced to pay overtime rates to workers on Sunday, Hughes said.
The main group in favor of the Sunday sales is the manufacturers, represented by the Washington, D.C.-based Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, known as DISCUS. The wine and spirits wholesalers, as well as the beer wholesalers, support the ban and are in favor of keeping the stores closed on Sundays.
Connecticut is one of only three states in the nation with an across-the-board ban on beer, wine, and hard liquor in package stores and grocery stores on Sundays. Others have various levels of the ban, and 14 states do not allow the sale of distilled spirits on Sundays.
As such, Hughes predicts the idea would actually drive many stores – some of which are barely profitable now – out of business. Many of the stores are literally “mom and pop” operations that are run by families in the old-fashioned way without computers. Of 1,100 package stores statewide, only 50 are on an e-mail list with the association. The rest receive their news about state issues through postcards that are sent through the U.S. mail.
Sunday sales has become a political issue at the Capitol with various gubernatorial candidates weighing in.
Greenwich Republican Tom Foley, the former U.S. ambassador to Ireland, said in an interview on Channel 3 on Sunday that he favors Sunday sales on philosophical – not financial – grounds.
“I don’t understand why our state is telling any business owner they can’t be open,” Foley said.
A legislative committee’s staff report says that the state could receive $8 million in additional tax revenue if the stores were open on Sunday. But the package stores association strongly rejects that figure, saying that sales would need to explode to generate that much tax revenue.
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-sunday-sales-0308.artmar08,0,176115.story
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-sunday-alcohol-sales-link-0309,0,6361871.story