The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's latest attempt to be consumer-friendly is rife with irony.

Last Thursday it announced that, in an attempt to be responsive to wine buyers in the government's 620 wine-and-spirits stores, it has created a state Wine Advisory Council. Among the council's first members are Alex Sebastian, owner of the Wooden Angel in Beaver, and Bill Kohl, manager of the Harrisburg Hilton and its Golden Sheaf restaurant. They'll be joined in coming months by other wine experts.

Irony No. 1: The LCB had a wine expert in its former chairman, Jonathan Newman, but he resigned in 2006 to protest the unnecessary hiring of a former state senator to the newly created post of CEO. Mr. Newman was the founder of the state stores' popular Chairman's Selection program, which highlighted wines of note and made them available at discount prices. Now his expertise is gone.

In unveiling the wine council last week, LCB Chairman Patrick Stapleton III said, "For too long, this organization has been about us and what we want to accomplish as an agency, and we have lost sight of what matters most -- our customers" (emphasis his).

Irony No. 2: When did the state monopoly begin quoting Post-Gazette editorials? As a longtime critic of the state's antiquated liquor system, we have said that the LCB has historically been about what's best for its employees and the government, not its customers. The LCB always countered that a government-run system has the public's interest at heart. Now apparently higher-ups there don't think so.

Finally, Mr. Stapleton recounted the dreary results of the LCB's first consumer survey, based on more than 2,000 responses last year. "We got a real wake-up call," he said. "Less than half of our customers told us they were satisfied with their shopping experience."

Irony No. 3: No kidding. The government is not private enterprise and it's not set up to behave as a business. Its employees are not driven to deliver customer service; its managers are not motivated by sales and profit. It lacks a merchant's very DNA, and no Wine Advisory Council can change that.

Just as lipstick on a pig is still a pig, window dressing on the LCB still hides a government monopoly.