KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Employees who handle alcohol at Kansas City, Missouri, bars and restaurants may not need permits in the near future.
The KCMO City Council is poised to take up Ordinance No. 230419. If passed, the new law would make life a bit easier for the city's 8,000 bartenders, waiters and waitresses, and other bar and restaurant workers by removing the requirement to obtain a liquor license.
Under current law, anyone involved in “delivering, taking orders for, accepting payment for, mixing, serving or assisting in mixing or serving alcoholic beverages” must purchase a city-issued liquor license.
Registered sex offenders are prohibited from receiving a liquor license, which costs $42 for a three-year permit.
Anyone convicted of a felony or released from prison for a felony conviction for assault, domestic assault, robbery, armed criminal action, sexual exploitation of a minor, trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation or a similar offense within the last five years also is prohibited from receiving a liquor license.
Mayor Quinton Lucas and council members Kevin O’Neill and Andrea Bough sponsored the ordinance, which would still require “retail sales-by-drink licensed establishments” not to hire registered sex offenders for alcohol-related jobs, but repeals the other sections that bar employment.
Businesses with a permit to serve alcohol must verify that the applicant isn’t listed on the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Registry, the Missouri State Highway Patrol Sex Offender Registry or the KBI Sex Offender Registry.
Currently, the KCMO Regulated Industries uses a third-party company to conduct background checks, but that would end under the new ordinance.
The ordinance notes that liquor permits are a barrier to employment, require workers to pay for access to the job market, do little to improve public health, and are redundant as the city has other liquor-control systems in place.
“Employee liquor permits are outdated and not used widely today in other cities across the country,” according to the ordinance.
The full council is expected to hear a first reading of the ordinance Thursday. The expectation is that it will be assigned to committee next week for a recommendation and could come before the full council again as soon as May 25.
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