CHEYENNE -- Beer, like movies, has always been regarded as recession-proof.

The worse the economy gets, the more people guzzle brews and escape into the fantasy world of movies, the general thinking goes.

The beer market hasn't stayed strong in the national recession, though.

And it hasn't in Wyoming, either.

Statewide beer sales were down 3.3 percent for the first nine months of 2009, said Pat Higgins, owner of Orrison Beverage Company in Cheyenne, quoting from a new report last week.

Higgins believes the decline correlates with the exodus of oil and gas field workers, a hard-working, hard-drinking, well-paid bunch.

Beer sellers in Carbon County and the western part of Wyoming are feeling the drop the most, he said.

The slump also extends to liquor and wine sales.

Greg Cook, director of the Wyoming Liquor Division, said sales statewide dropped 2.23 percent between May 1 and October 31.

This decrease reverses a previous trend of 2 and 3 percent increases.

"You are seeing people trading down to less expensive brands," Cook said.

He said he also believes people are buying more spirits from package stores for home consumption and are spending less in bars.

What is intriguing politically is how impossible it has been to increase the tax on beer in Wyoming.

Despite regular, usually annual, attempts, Wyoming still has the lowest tax on beer in the nation of any state -- 2 cents per gallon.

Any legislative proposal to hike the tax on beer is one quick way to fill the big hearing room in the Capitol Building.

The bill is quickly branded as a dastardly attack on the working people of the state. And it dies.

It can be said that, politically, beer is a protected beverage in Wyoming.

A beer or liquor tax isn't on the lawmakers' radar for next year's recession session, although a gas tax and perhaps other levies may surface.

People have read plenty about the effect of the national recession and the market on state revenues, particularly mineral income.

The state alone has lost about $1 billion in expected dollars over the past year. The local governments are getting pinched on sales tax income.

Last week the Joint Appropriations Committee was alerted to the market impact on a little known state retirement fund, firefighter's pension fund A.

The account has, I think, a strange history.

In 1981, it was going broke. The Legislature propped it up with $46.8 million in state dollars.

The Legislature set up a new fund, Plan B, for firefighters hired after 1981. It is more in line with the requirements of the major state retirement system.

Plan A did okay. By 1997 it was 122 percent fully funded. The Wyoming Retirement Board, on the advice of its actuary, suspended contributions to the fund.

Contributions never were reinstated.

As Cheyenne's Fire Chief Guy Cameron said, "The Legislature made it a closed system."

All was well until this year when the fund dropped to 85 percent of being fully funded because of a drop in the market value of the fund's assets.

Now the fund has an unfunded liability of about $30 million.

Although the fund apparently is in no danger of not having enough money to pay benefits, it doesn't have enough to pay a mandatory 3 percent cost of living (cola) increase.

Plan A has only 15 active firemen left and pays beneficiaries to 308 pensioners and disabled firemen. The average benefit is $43,117 a year.

For many of these firemen, the fund provides their only retirement income. They do not receive Social Security benefits.

That's why the retirees are monitoring the plan to see what the Legislature will do.

It is yet another casualty of the recession.

Contact Joan Barron by e-mail at joan.barron@trib.com or by phone at (307) 632-1244.