The Utah Senate voted down changes to the state’s liquor laws late Tuesday after Republican lawmakers disagreed over who gets to decide how close a bar or restaurant can be to a park or playground.
The annual omnibus liquor bill, SB328, is usually routine legislation that makes minor tweaks to the state’s alcohol laws. But the disagreement led to its defeat by a 15-13 vote. There’s still a chance it could come back in some form, though, before the 2025 legislative session ends late Friday.
The sticking point Tuesday was a provision to change the state’s “proximity” law, which dictates that no liquor license holder — bar or restaurant — can have its front doors within a 600-foot walk from a park or playground.
When the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, shared the draft last week, it introduced a proximity law exemption for land the state is developing at Point of the Mountain in Draper, the former site of the Utah state prison. That exemption was similar to one lawmakers approved in 2024 for the “entertainment district” in downtown Salt Lake City, between the Delta Center and City Creek Center shopping complex.
By Monday, Stevenson had amended the language more broadly, to let cities — not the state — decide what proximity laws should be in place. The Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee passed that draft on a 6-0 vote.
In the 24 hours between Monday’s committee vote and Tuesday’s floor vote, though, the bill was amended three more times.
Along the way, a 0.35% increase to the state’s markup — what consumers pay Utah for hard liquor, above what the state pays wholesalers — was stripped out of the bill. That change, which was expected to raise $700,000 a year, was earmarked to help pay for inmate education programs.
On Tuesday night, Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, tried to introduce a fifth version of the bill, which aimed to keep state control over proximity rules but still carve out an exemption for Point of the Mountain.
Fillmore called the shift to local control “a significant policy change,” one that “needs more vetting than we can give it today.” But Stevenson objected.
Handing control of proximity law to cities, Stevenson argued, supports multi-use developments, like what’s being proposed for Point of the Mountain and beyond. “I think you could see something like this, maybe, in Moab … in Park City, or even down in the St. George area,” Stevenson said.
“This would accommodate those [developments] without having to go through this every year, of going through the situation of trying to define an ‘entertainment district,’” Stevenson said.
The Senate, though, opted against Stevenson’s argument. During the roll call vote, one senator was heard saying “hell no” to the bill. A few minutes later, the Senate took a recess and later adjourned without returning.
Among the other proposed changes to Utah’s liquor law that may have been scuttled Tuesday night:
• A rule that would let people include beer in their online grocery store orders that they later pick up in store parking lots. Under current law, shoppers have to leave their vehicle and enter the store to buy beer.
• Allowing a so-called “straw test” in bars or restaurants — a common practice that typically involves mixologists dipping a small straw into a cocktail, pulling it out and tasting the tiny amount in the straw to ensure quality.
• Clarifying that the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services’ liquor commission can deny a license to a business if the applicant’s violation history warrants it. The 2024 liquor bill took that discretion away from the commission.