It's been 10 years since then-Gov. Tom Ridge led the last real charge to privatize the state's wine and spirits stores. Back then, auditors said the sell-off might reap as much as $600 million. Today? Observers believe such a sale could generate as much as $1 billion, or perhaps much more, depending on whether the state would keep bits of the enterprise for itself or completely wash its hands of alcohol.

"The value of the PLCB has gone up tremendously" since a 1997 study by auditing firm Price Waterhouse, now PricewaterhouseCoopers, examined the private value of the state's liquor industry, said Jonathan Newman, departed chair of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.

Such a windfall could help ease some of the big financial issues confronting the state, from road and bridges that are in dire shape and in need of repairs to looming deficits in the state's pension obligations to the state's growing Department of Public Welfare, which eats up larger shares of the state's budget year after year.

But advocates for such a move shouldn't get their hopes up anytime soon. Gov. Ed Rendell, who in the past has shown a willingness to take on unions when he believes economic interests are at stake, hasn't even hinted at taking on this political hot potato since 2002. And no one is talking about sponsoring any legislation that could spark a sell-off.

Yet the prospect of a sell-off always looms, in the opinion of Ed Cloonan, president of the Independent State Store Union, because there's a segment of the body politic that thinks it's economically wise to sell off valuable state assets, trading a steady flow of annual income for a big sum dedicated to reducing immediate debts. Talks are afoot, for example, for the sale or lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Such an arrangement could bring the state up to $30 billion, Mr. Rendell had estimated, though he now says the figure is between $10 billion and $13 billion.

Others lawmakers think that the state simply shouldn't mix booze and politics. The most recent political fracas -- Mr. Newman, a Republican, stepped down from the board after the Democratic governor named ex-Sen. Joseph Conti as the board's CEO -- reinforces that mind set.

"It allows an opening for people to say, 'Get rid of that mess,' " Mr. Cloonan said.

In many ways, said Mr. Newman, the LCB is a more attractive asset than the highway system. The turnpike generates $600 million in toll revenues, while the LCB this year should bring in a gross in the range of $1.7 billion, with the state's cut amounting to about $80 million in profits. (The state and localities still would receive the roughly $315 million raised annually by sales and liquor taxes, whether the stores are privately or publicly run.)

In its audit a decade ago, Price Waterhouse said the state could fetch $600 million if it auctioned 750 or so retail licenses, each covering 10 years. But the take could rise dramatically if Pennsylvania would, for example, extend the duration of the spirits store licenses; a 30-year license would be worth more than a 10-year license, obviously.

The per-year value of the licenses would have certainly increased over the intervening decade, too, since liquor and especially wine sales have soared exponentially, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Sales at the state's 643 liquor stores have increased 30 percent over the last five years, and soon America, not France or Italy, will be the biggest consumer of wine.

"The volume of market demand is a key," said James C. Stalder, a former partner with the local PriceWaterhouse Coopers branch who worked on the 1997 study and testified in Harrisburg on the potential LCB retail auction.

Another key, he said, is how the deal is arranged. Though the proposal that got all of the media attention was a plan to auction licenses for a 10-year period, the firm analyzed more than 20 different scenarios, each with varying revenue estimates.

One scenario that could bring in big cash is the sale of the state's wholesale business. Under the old Ridge plan, the stores would have been privatized, but the wholesale business -- buying the liquor from its makers, then distributing it to the stores -- would have remained in the state's hands. But the right to sell liquor to the privatized stores could be auctioned, too, either to one statewide vendor or to multiple vendors that would compete with each other or be assigned to exclusive regions.

However that pie is sliced, Mr. Newman predicted the state could fetch billions in exchange for the right to distribute liquor to the state stores. Like the turnpike, the LCB's retail outlets and wholesale side have free-market value that is trapped by the state's monopoly.

As Mr. Rendell said in his budget speech this month, "the private sector would offer significant value for the right to lease the turnpike," one of the state's "most undervalued assets." It's time to leverage the trapped value into cash, he said. The very same could be said of the state stores.

But the economic calculus always has been the easy part of this equation. The hard part is convincing Bible Belt Republicans and pro-labor Democrats to put up the tough votes that will privatize the wine and liquor business, putting in danger thousands of union jobs and at the same time offending the sensibilities of reliable GOP voters who want to keep booze away from kids.

Together, these two often ideologically opposed groups agree on blocking privatization and team with others in this camp, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Mr. Rendell, when campaigning for governor in 2002, said he thought liquor-store privatization is "basically a good idea," but thought the prospects were poor since he was to be pitted against a GOP Legislature.

Now, that Democrats have narrowly taken control of the state House, might the prospects be a bit brighter?

Not really.

"No, he is not considering privatizing the LCB," said Kate Philips, spokeswoman for the governor. "The LCB is making money for the state ... The potential lease of the turnpike is not a good comparison," she said, adding that over the last four years, the governor has prodded the LCB to operate more like a private business.

As in years past, anyone who'd take up the cause of state store privatization could expect a fight from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which represents state store workers, as well as the Independent State Store Union, which represents managers and supervisors.

Mr. Rendell hasn't been shy about taking on unions, and when he ran for the Democratic primary in 2003 against Bob Casey, labor unions backed Mr. Casey, not Mr. Rendell. But he's shown no will to take on these particular unions, passing on a chance to do so last month.

That's when the LCB reached a tentative agreement with its 2,800 unionized employees, a contract that included a "successor clause," which would theoretically force anyone who buys a single state store or the entire system to hire the clerks at their contracted salaries. The absence of such a clause would make the retail side of the state store system more attractive; its inclusion makes the investment less so.

"If he really wanted to [privatize], he would have tried to bargain that out," said Wendell Young IV, UFCW 1776 president.

Mr. Young said the question of whether the growing public-private-partnership movement might bleed into the LCB is a valid one. "Anybody that's watching the governor [try to lease the turnpike] might think, 'Maybe he wants to sell this other stuff.' The PLCB has been the target of privatization for more than 30 years," Mr. Young said.

But the one-time infusion of cash, he said, isn't enough to cover the losses that would accumulate over time, from lost profits (the same concerns exist about the proposed turnpike deal, by the way). The increased value of the wine and liquor business over the last decade, which makes the retail outlets so attractive to the private market, is also what makes it so hard for the state to part with its Prohibition relic and the revenue it generates. That's why the Wal-Marts, Giants and Wegmans of the world won't be able to persuade lawmakers and the governor to act, any more than they could to 10 years ago.

"It's not going to happen," Mr. Young said.

Pennsylvania and Utah are the only states to fully regulate wine and liquor sales, down to the retail level.