Wine and spirits consumers should be delighted that the state liquor stores are pushing good manners. The question is, at what price?

Why should it take a $173,000 contract with a West End consulting firm, Solutions 21, to teach store clerks how to deliver cheerful customer service?

Why are many Pennsylvanians not surprised some are calling the contract from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board an inside job since it went to the husband of one of the agency's regional managers?

Finally, why is no one reassured by Gov. Ed Rendell's call for an investigation of how the contract was awarded?

Because Pennsylvania still will be saddled with the same relic from the post-Prohibition days, a package-liquor monopoly controlled at the wholesale and retail levels by the government.

This is not to disparage those liquor-store workers who strive to do a good job and even know something about the products they sell. But there are far too many who end up in state stores without an affinity for the merchandise or a desire to serve the public.

Certainly, it can happen with private retailers, too. But in that case, healthy competition from other private merchants would be a corrective and, with any luck, force a lousy and unresponsive store out of business. No such chance with a government monopoly. It doesn't have to compete.

So instead of hiring eager sales staff who want to share their knowledge and enthusiasm about wine and spirits, the system must pay a consultant to run sessions for government workers on how to be friendly and well-versed in the product. What do you expect from an agency whose innovative chairman, Jonathan Newman, saw no choice but to resign two years ago after the governor pressured the PLCB to install a former state senator, Joe Conti, to take over its day-to-day operations?

Pennsylvania can run all the employee training sessions it likes, add Sunday hours to some stores and put a few outlets in supermarkets (separate cash registers, of course). But, in the end, it will still be a government system, run by government people, in a way that serves the government.

That's the price of monopoly, and in Pennsylvania that price is too high.