Last week, Rep. Greg Hughes took a break from negotiating a sweeping liquor bill to do a little research.

The Draper Republican, a non-drinking Mormon, went on a bar crawl of sorts.

Hughes visited a handful of upscale downtown bars and restaurants, armed with a driver license scanner that verifies the authenticity of the license to gauge owners' openness to the technology.

The feedback, he said Thursday, was universally supportive of the device, which, under a deal that lawmakers are on the brink of formalizing, would replace Utah's one-of-a-kind private club law that has been an irritant to drinkers for nearly four decades.

Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, says he hopes to have the voluminous bill written by today that would abolish private clubs and change how restaurants can serve drinks.

The deal also includes a whole series of tougher laws, clamping down on drunken driving, including potential vehicle forfeiture for repeat offenders and the loss of a license for underage drunk drivers.

Valentine and Senate President Mike Waddoups in December made a similar round of trips to clubs researching possible liquor-law changes. They visited several establishments that already use a card-scanning device.

Valentine hopes he and Hughes can reach complete agreement and move ahead with a consensus bill in the session's last days.

The two lawmakers have been in intense negotiations with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., representatives from the bar and restaurant associations and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to hammer out a deal.

"[The church is] a major stakeholder and without their participation it wouldn't happen," Valentine said. "It is a major stakeholder because it is the dominant religion in this state, just like the Catholic Church would be a major stakeholder in Massachusetts or the Southern Baptist movement would be a major stakeholder in the South."

While Valentine and Hughes, who was sponsoring a bill backed by Huntsman, started far apart, they have quickly coalesced around a set of solutions and are now hammering out details.

"I've been here long enough to know that, when it gets down to the end of the session … people start saying, 'I could lose,'" he said. That "tyranny of the clock" motivates parties to reach a deal.

As it stands, that deal would do away with Utah's private club law, which requires anyone ordering a drink in a bar to be a member of the club or the guest of a member.

Instead, driver licenses of those 30 and younger or potentially 35 would be scanned to ensure the patron is of legal drinking age.

Valentine said, as it stands now, restaurants with existing bars would be grandfathered in, and not required to make changes to their current layout, although no one under age 21 would be permitted at the bar.

Going forward, the Legislature would set clear policy that restaurants seeking a liquor license would have to have a "separate dispensing area," away from the public view, to mix drinks. It would be up to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to craft a series of "templates" of acceptable designs for those restaurants.