Cheyenne Mayor: We Need To Look At Liquor License Rules
The mayor of Wyoming's largest city says he thinks the state needs to take a hard look at the laws governing the allocation of liquor licenses across Wyoming.
Cheyenne Mayor Rick Kaysen agrees with the Wyoming Association of Municipalities about the need to reconsider the current cap on the number of licenses per community.
Under current state law every Wyoming community is allowed to issue a certain number of licenses based on its population. Kaysen says he would be in favor of allowing a lot more local flexibility to towns and cities across the state, so that a mid-size community such as Riverton or a smaller town like Pine Bluffs could make their own decisions about the number of liquor licenses to issue.
The mayor says at this point he isn't sure whether the solution would be to increase the number of licenses allowed or to do away with the caps on licenses entirely, but he says it's something that needs to be discussed.
He says that includes a discussion on whether the licenses should be issued by population at all or whether the determining factor should be how many licenses the marketplace will support.
The Wyoming State Liquor Association is against changing the current license allocation system, arguing removing the population cap would hurt people who already hold liquor licenses and could lead to an over-saturation of license holders.