(Bloomberg) — New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy proposed expanding the number of liquor licenses in the state and providing shore towns with funding to help upgrade their boardwalks.
(Bloomberg) — New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy proposed expanding the number of liquor licenses in the state and providing shore towns with funding to help upgrade their boardwalks.
“Our liquor licensing regime is antiquated and confusing,” the governor said Tuesday during his annual policy address.
“I ask for your partnership in rewriting our liquor license laws to make them not just modern, but fair,” Murphy said to lawmakers. “The old rules have purposely created market scarcity and driven up costs to the point where a liquor license can draw seven figures.”
The new boardwalk fund, meanwhile, will be part of Murphy’s budget proposal next month, he said. Local infrastructure “is the backbone of a community,” the governor said. “In many towns along our Atlantic coast, that backbone is, literally, made of wood.”
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In New Jersey, a town can issue just one liquor license for every 3,000 residents. Murphy’s proposal would gradually relax that cap and then expand the number of available licenses “until the restriction is eliminated in its entirety and the market can work freely,” he said.
Existing licensees would be eligible for tax credits.
Murphy projected that overhauling the liquor license rules will create as many as 10,000 jobs annually and, over the next 10 years, generate up to $10 billion in new economic activity and $1 billion in new state and local revenues.
“This won’t be easy, but it will be worth it,” he said.
(Updates with details of proposal)
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