Depending on how you’re faring financially, it’s either a godsend or a nightmare.

From any viewpoint, however, Idaho’s legal mechanism for doling out liquor licenses to bars and restaurants seems as tangled as a barroom brawl.

The man charged with overseeing the process, Capt. Russ Wheatley of the Idaho State Police’s alcohol beverage control bureau, sees a good share of problems — even while suggesting the system could become even more problematic if the state legislature decides to toss it out in favor of something entirely new.

“It’s certainly not perfect,” Wheatley said, “and you can pick out difficulties pretty easily. For instance, Coeur d’Alene has 32 on-site licenses that have been purchased privately or obtained through the state’s quota system (one license per every 1,500 residents).

“But at the same time, Coeur d’Alene has 25 people on the waiting list for a license. Pocatello has had some people on their waiting list since 1976, which is unbelievable. Meanwhile, the city of Nampa has seven unused licenses that are available for anyone who applies and is qualified.

“As a state, it’s obvious we haven’t done a good job keeping up with business practices. But change is difficult, because alcohol is one place where public safety runs head-on into economic growth.”

Difficult or not, Rep. Luke Malek, R-Coeur d’Alene, and a growing number of legislators hope to create a law that would scrap the current system and put something in place that allows for the vastly different license needs across the state.

“The current system is manifestly unjust,” Malek said. “You have a historic restaurant in downtown Coeur d’Alene (The Cellar) closing because the previous owners have sold their liquor license for a huge amount of money (approximately $300,000, according to several sources), while the next owner can’t stay in business because there’s no system by which the state can grant him a liquor license.

“That makes no sense at all, and it’s clear that the whole process needs to be fixed.”

Malek believes he can drum up the necessary votes in the legislature to install a completely new mechanism.

The present system involves two types of on-site consumption permits.

The first group is specialty licenses, which are not limited numerically and are issued — without any waiting beyond background checks — to businesses on waterfronts, to recreational facilities like golf courses, to private organizations such as the Elks Lodge on west Prairie Avenue, and to any business that has been in continuous operation for 75 years or more, or is listed as a historic structure (Greenbriar Inn on east Wallace Avenue.)

Specialty licenses — Coeur d’Alene has 14 of them inside or just adjacent to the city limits — cannot be transferred, but do allow for more than one entity under single ownership to sell liquor if it’s located on the same contiguous piece of property.

For instance, The Coeur d’Alene Resort qualifies as a waterfront location and is legally permitted to have multiple restaurants or bars selling liquor.

“That part of the law makes some sense,” Malek said, “because there is no mandated quota and because these licenses carry no equity with them.”

It’s the second, and more common, type of license that has legislators considering wholesale change.

These are “quota-system” licenses, the type that are limited by a city’s population, that create waiting lists in cases like Coeur d’Alene’s. Unlike specialty licenses, these are transferable — which gives license-holders permanent equity, the type you might find in a private home.

In cities where there is intense demand, the price for these quota licenses can not only be enormous, but continue to rise.

“That’s simply wrong, the idea of selling or leasing state permission to do something that is otherwise illegal,” Malek said. “That’s an error hanging over the entire system.

“But there also is the economic reality that every jurisdiction in Idaho is different. The bill we’re putting together would allow for local control of liquor licensing for restaurants — that is, a business which does 75 percent of its business in food.

“Cities and counties would be in charge of distributing however many licenses they feel correct for them, and charge a fee — $3,000 at a minimum with no upper limit — to cover that jurisdiction’s cost of administration and oversight.”

State Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d’Alene, indicated she could be in favor of a new system.

“This type of change was considered in 2009,” she said, “but that was the beginning of the recession and so it wasn’t a priority. It’s true, though, that we have an unusual system that doesn’t work in some locations.

“The key to any proposed change is that it would apply to restaurants only, which is quite a bit different from having a whole lot of new bars.”

In fact, the bill Malek is helping cobble together would keep the number of bar licenses in Idaho static.

“As a matter of fairness,” he said, “the legacy license-holders have to be considered because they’ve done everything according to the rules in place. They still could sell their licenses — that would be the only way to open a new bar, for instance — and they would be both exempt from yearly fees and taxed at a lower rate than the new, locally administered licenses.”

Malek and Souza both pointed to local control as the key component of any change, citing the fact that so many locations in Idaho have varying business needs.

“The state would still be the umbrella organization,” Malek said, “because of all the licenses already in existence. Oversight for those would remain with the state — so basically, we would have a sensible, two-tiered system that addresses economic demands all over the state.”

Malek said he hopes wording for a bill can be hammered out within days, allowing a House committee to take up the measure in time to pass it during this legislative session.