HARRISBURG, Pa. _ Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf says he will free the six-pack.
In a statement Thursday, the Democratic governor said he intends to sign a bill passed by the legislature this week to allow beer distributors to sell six-packs.
The change is momentous _ at least it is for Pennsylvania, where the system for selling wine, hard liquor and beer dates back to the end of Prohibition.
"I have worked hard with Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly to modernize the sale of liquor, wine and beer in Pennsylvania in order to bring the commonwealth's wine and spirits system into the 21st century," Wolf said in a statement.
The way it stands now, beer distributors can only sell cases, 12-packs and kegs (and 12-packs are a recent addition to retail shelves). The bill Wolf will sign will allow beer distributors to sell six-packs, growlers and single cans of beer.
The measure also makes other changes, from allowing mead at farmer's markets to allowing hard liquor to be consumed at stadiums that already sell beer. Getting six-packs onto beer distributors' shelves has been decades in the making.
It was a running joke in Harrisburg that the effort was the Capitol's version of the movie "Groundhog Day." Nearly every session, someone would push a variation of the six-pack bill now headed to Wolf, only to be thwarted by a seemingly unmovable sentiment among legislators that modernizing the state's liquor laws would lead to financial or social havoc _ or both.
But in recent years, as new faces have entered the legislature _ and as legislative leaders have thrown their political weight behind liquor privatization _ that sentiment changed.
The Wolf administration has also given the issue a boost. Although the governor does not support full-scale privatization of the state-run system, he has pushed for modernizing the laws for the sale not just of beer, but of wine and spirits.
Earlier this year, he signed into law a bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature breaking the monopoly on the sale of wine held by state-run wine and spirits shops.
The new law allows restaurants, hotels and hundreds of grocery and convenience stores to sell up to four bottles of wine to go. It allows the state-run Liquor Control Board to open more stores _ and with extended hours _ on Sundays.
