Liquor is on the menu at the Municipal League
The Pierre Capitol Journal is reporting on the mayors of Pierre and Ft. Pierre attending a forum sponsored by the SD Municipal League – where it appears cities could be pitted against current liquor license holders in battle this next session:
Currently the number of liquor licenses that can be issued in an area is dictated by population, allowing 15 for Pierre, and six on-sale licenses and five off-sale for Fort Pierre.Pierre mayor Dennis Eisnach said this current cap is a barrier for economic development in the area, and the state.
“I think that Pierre faces the same thing as some of the larger municipalities,” Eisnach said. “We have all of the liquor licenses, that we are allowed by law, issued, and we have no room if somebody comes in with an Applebee’s or some other restaurant that would prefer to have a liquor license. We don’t have one to offer them.”
and…When the issue was discussed in January, one of the concerns that was brought up was the cost of the licenses, between $75,000 to $100,000, according to Rep. Tim Rounds, R-Pierre.
“These people have invested a lot of money in these licenses,” Rounds said at the time. “They’re an expensive commodity. And if you take that cap off, what about these people who have invested all that money?”
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Comments
True dat. However, you should probably recognize that the people that hold these licenses invariably are “movers and shakers”. You’re going to need a pretty substantial groundswelling of support for this before lawmakers are willing to let them take a $100k hit. I’d just hire a firm to document the actual purchace price across the state and offer an average. Some would make money, some would lose money but it would alleviate quite a bit of the argument against changing the status quo.
Here’s the deal.
Changes in this area won’t float in the Senate. Gene A. is against it. He stands up against increased liquor licenses. He wants to keep drunks off the streets, which is an admirable goal. He has a lot of powerful friends, and he usually gets his way (mostly because he’s kind of a grumpy guy).
Gene does not want more bars out there.
Liquor licenses should not be called “licenses”. Off the top of my head I cant think of another “license” you keep for life if you dont commit a felony and can sell and transfer. I cant sell or transfer my drivers license, hunting, fishing, sales tax, burning, dumping, whatever license. What if we treated hunting and fishing licenses like liquor ? let folks sell them to highest biddder! The whole process needs to change. Cap or no cap, the right to sell and transfer these licenses needs to stop. Lets make selling liquor a privelege and not a right, like driving, hunting etc.
Those who hold these licenses but don’t actually use them to run a liquor selling establishment have chosen to speculate on an artificially scarce item. Being such the scarcity is volatile and subject to the whims of lawmakers.
A reasonable person who speculates on liquor licenses knows that the number available can change. After all, they are simply items created and destroyed by law.
The people of South Dakota don’t owe the current license holders anything. We owe them neither retribution for the inevitable decrease in value after the creation of more licenses, nor maintaining the current issue limit to protect the current license value.