The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee considered four draft bills Thursday that would modify the state’s liquor license statutes. 

Only one was ultimately approved for the committee to sponsor for the 2023 general session: one which would loosen population formulas for bar-and-grill liquor licenses. 

Stakeholders from throughout the state have been pushing the Legislature to take action to make more liquor licenses available, saying the current laws are stifling economic growth and encumbering innovative business proposals. 

A recent example came from Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins, who had 11 local entrepreneurs apply for a sole retail liquor license. 

“We have 38 people who own a retail liquor license. Some of them are good friends of mine, and I feel like our future growth has been held hostage because no one wants to do anything that will take the sale of even one beer from those 38 people,” Collins told committee members Thursday. “I’ve heard all of the reasons, you’ve heard them all, but it frustrates me. It’s hurting our ability to diversify our economy.” 

Along with supporters of expanding the number of liquor licenses available or changing the population requirements come wary critics. 

Health care providers, as well as law enforcement and state liquor association members, shared their perspectives on more liquor distribution, such as rising alcoholism, increased crime and unsafe quantities of alcohol available to the public. 

Lawmakers listened to the debate and conflicting positions on all four bills. 

They decided to indefinitely delay a piece of legislation that would have made any retail liquor licenses issued after July 1, 2023 non-transferable and continue to draft changes to two others before the next meeting in mid-October.

The bills that the committee will reconvene to consider relate to the cost of retail liquor license fees and creating a tavern and entertainment liquor license. 

There would have been no limit on the number of the latter licenses based on population, and many criticisms came from both sides of the argument due to the definition of “entertainment.” 

April Brimmer-Kunz, one of the 11 applicants for the single retail liquor license in Cheyenne, was especially passionate regarding the development of a new type of liquor license. 

She and her son plan to open Ace’s Range in Cheyenne, a golf and laser shooting simulator location, but they were denied the license. 

She told committee members that she understood why they were denied, yet there wasn’t a license that fit the needs of their business. 

“The world is changing,” she said. “And I think the liquor licenses need to change with it.” 

The one proposal that was supported by the committee relates to changes to bar-and-grill licenses. 

The committee’s fourth draft bill would change the population formula for bar-and-grill licenses starting July 1, 2023, and incrementally increase the number of licenses available. 

It would sunset on July 1, 2028, when another set of population formulas would be issued with even more licenses available per thousand. The final sunset would be in 2033, when population would no longer be a factor in the issuance of bar-and-grill liquor licenses. 

A similar system is laid out for county commissioners, and the cost of those licenses is adjusted as well. 

The license fee assessed for bar-and-grill liquor licenses would not be less than $1,500, no more than $10,500. 

Those amounts would be changed in 2033, when each license would cost no less than $500 and no more than $3,000. 

Applicants for a bar-and-grill liquor license would still have to satisfy the appropriate licensing authority that not less than 60% of revenue from the operation of the bar and grill would come from food service, not alcohol sales. 

This applies to all 12 months of operation, and an annual gross sales figures report would be required. 

“It worries me sick to flood the market, because of the burden to our communities, law enforcement, etcetera. This does it in phases,” said Mike Moser, the executive director of the Wyoming State Liquor Association. “And I think that way we can gradually adopt it is, as Mick Jagger says, ‘You can’t always get what you want. But you find you always get what you need.’ And this gets what people need.”