When it comes to politics we usually stay out of it. This is a beer site after all. However when politics creep into our world, there’s no way to avoid it. As we wrote in the past Governor Wolf Announced $705,000 in PLCB Grants and the largest amount went to a state backed program.
To bring you up to speed, the state program received the most money of any grantee by a long shot. In fact it was over $30,000 more than the next project. The PA Department of Community and Economic Development received $127,500 for the following:
Pennsylvania Pursue Your Hoppiness: Identification of 12 beer trails geographically linking breweries based on the state’s existing tourism regions, and creation, development, and employment of a single, identifiable brand identity for Pennsylvania’s malt and brewed beverage industry.
We’re not here to tell anyone how to spend their money. But when someone receives money to do EXACTLY what we do, we think we can speak with a bit of expertise.
As of this writing the $127,000 site offers the following resources; a list of beer trails, beer festivals, brewery list/ map and 3 blog posts. If you’ve followed our site long enough you know where you can also find a list of beer trails, beer festivals, brewery list/ map and 200+ blog posts.
Which is why we feel confident enough to say that there is no reason the state should have received a six figure payout for this project. We know the operational costs of a resource like that, and we can assure you it is nowhere near that price tag.
If our site is going to exist to support small business, it is important that we discuss these topics. Not because we feel we are owed this money, but instead to us this feels like a gross misuse of funds that could have been put to supporting the brewers that make up this state.
We have personal relationships with some of the breweries that this money went to. And we know first hand how big of an impact this money had on them. We would have loved to see some of that $700,000 grant money go to even more instead of funneling back into the state.
