Let the free market decide who gets a liquor license and who doesn’t | Opinion

The Idaho Legislature once again is wrestling with the state’s arcane liquor license laws.

Based in the Idaho Constitution’s clause that mandates the Legislature promote temperance, Idaho strictly controls liquor sales in the state, running state-owned liquor stores and limiting the number of liquor licenses per city based on population.

“The first concern of all good government is the virtue and sobriety of the people, and the purity of the home,” according to the Constitution’s Promotion of Temperance and Morality section. “The legislature should further all wise and well directed efforts for the promotion of temperance and morality.”

It’s led to the sale of after-market liquor licenses in cities like Boise for up to $300,000. For those who cannot afford that, the only other option is to put your name on a list and wait for years and years for your name to come up.

We’ve got to hand it to this latest effort to get around the law: Expand the exception in state law for “waterfront resorts” to include certain properties along the Boise River corridor, including in Garden City, Boise and beyond, according to an Idaho Statesman article by Sarah Cutler.

Clever.

The change in state law, pitched Wednesday in a state House committee hearing, would involve lowering the bar on how much water must be flowing through a river for the properties nearby to be considered “waterfront resorts.”

It’s brilliant, really, and could affect any number of properties along the Boise River in the Treasure Valley. It could be a boon for some and could even spark a mad scramble for riverfront development.

At the heart of the bill is a new project, The Boardwalk Apartments, a mixed-use project going up in Garden City. One proposal for the apartment development is a high-end restaurant — a challenging prospect without a liquor license.

Garden City Mayor John Evans, whose city could be a huge beneficiary of a riverfront liquor license clause, supports the bill.

Alas, though, it would set up yet another layer of haves and have-nots, winners and losers, in the state’s already convoluted liquor laws.

“I’m torn on these issues,” state Sen. Kelly Anthon, a Republican from Rupert and the Senate majority leader, said at the hearing. “You’re saying the folks who are just lucky enough to be situated on the riverbank, you get one. But you go out into the rural communities where there’s no riverbank, and you don’t get one.”

The solution is so simple, it’s obvious: If someone wants a liquor license, they get one. Fill out an application, pay your 15 bucks and you’re in business.

Get government out of the liquor business, and let the free market decide.

Idaho is known as a strong free-market state, yet our system of liquor licenses is onerous, heavily regulated and limiting to the free market.

This latest attempt to add another carve-out to the state’s liquor laws offers yet another opportunity to revisit the idea that Idaho should get rid of this vestige of big government.

If it helps, legislators and the governor could pitch it as a part of the governor’s “Red Tape Reduction Act.”

Idaho Code Title 23 Alcoholic Beverages is 14 chapters and hundreds of pages long. Imagine the red tape Idaho could cut if it got out of the liquor business.

Of course, eliminating the state’s liquor laws would be unfair to those folks who shelled out $300,000 for an after-market liquor license based on the expectation that licenses would be limited, thus making their license more valuable.

So if it makes it more palatable, the state could phase it in, allowing an increased number of licenses slowly over time over, say, five years, giving everyone a chance to recoup their investments.

Rather than create another carve-out that creates another set of winners and losers, it makes more sense to get rid of the law altogether.

Get rid of red tape, reduce the size of state government, eliminate pages and pages of onerous regulations and get the state government out of the free market?

What could be more Idaho than that?

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mary Rohlfing and Patricia Nilsson.