the unequivocal notion

One of Gov. Otter’s initiatives that I’ve been waiting for; ending Idaho’s moralistic, antiquated liquor license quota system.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it’s going to level the playing field for bar owners, or potential bar owners — only for restaurant and lodging interests.

On the surface this reeks of “we don’t want to hamper any out-of-state chain restaurants when they want to move into Idaho”. Any Joeblow from Idaho that wants to open up a neighborhood imbibing joint is still left out in the cold unless he wants to buy an artificially inflated, exuberantly priced liquor license.

More here from Hoffman’s Daigle’s article in the Boise Weekly.

Frankly, I don’t understand why we are essentially using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the artificial value of these liquor licenses — it’s very un-Libertarian of the Governor — the government shouldn’t be in the business of backing up investments or speculation by individual businesses. They should be providing an equal opportunity to both Joe Average Idahoan and out-of-state chain operators.

Now, not to leave current holders out in the cold, I do think that they should have gotten a tax break for a period of time in order for them to make back what they paid for their liquor license, but no more. In essence, you are still forcing someone who wants to open up a bar to pay upwards of $150K for a license that originally cost around $550.

Idaho politicians will jump through hoops of fire to make schemes like Tamarack happen but on the next business day they’ll do whatever they can to make the lives of ordinary Idahoans as difficult as possible.

This is pretty disappointing coming from Gov. Otter.

BLOGS: Idaho Falls Today! (from Jan. of ‘08) Joe makes a good point; if we can sell state sanctioned licenses, why can’t we sell our drivers license to someone for 3 grand if we wanted to?