Wynn, the former director of the Utah Department of Alcohol Beverage Control, has recommended that the ABC board abolish the restaurant liquor license quotas and shift licensing powers to local governments. Municipal officials could approve as many licenses for qualified applicants as they please.

The recommendation, delivered at a public hearing last week, came in response to reports that the state's liquor license supply for restaurants is running dry. Only two "limited" licenses that allow beer and wine sales remain, while the supply of "full-service" licenses that permit the sale of spirits has dwindled to 21.

Wynn has a good grasp of the problem. There aren't enough liquor licenses to meet the demand. Businesses that are denied a license suffer from an unfair competitive disadvantage. And, there's no advantage to limiting the number of restaurant liquor licenses because the problems from alcohol result from overconsumption, not a glass of beer or wine with a meal.

But part of his plan to increase license availability - handing licensing powers over to the anti-tippling majority in many municipal governments in Utah - would surely backfire. Instead of increasing the availability of liquor licenses and legal beverages, it might well make them more difficult to obtain.

If the board takes Wynn's advice, salad bars might be the only bars in new restaurants. Municipal officials could impose their own codes of moral conduct on the masses and deny any and all license requests.

The board has discussed asking the Legislature to increase the quotas and did not act or even comment on Wynn's suggestion. Hopefully, they've already dismissed it as a bad idea.

Lawmakers need to increase the quota so that each and every applicant who meets the rigorous requirements set down by the state can obtain a restaurant liquor license. And they can act with a clear conscience, because, as Wynn himself said, "People who go to restaurants don't go there to get drunk."