Town Meeting voters in October will consider a bylaw that would require vendors who apply for certain types of licenses to be fingerprinted in order to obtain the license.

Under the proposed bylaw, which was submitted at the request of the Wareham Police Department, anyone "applying for licenses to engage in the business of hawking and peddling, junk/metal/secondhand dealers, pawn brokers, house to house commercial salesmen and hackney drivers" would be subject to fingerprinting.

The fingerprints would be submitted to state and federal authorities in order to determine whether or not the applicant has a criminal record and, if so, whether or not that record has any bearing on a party's "ability or fitness to be granted a license."

Town Administrator Derek Sullivan explained the reasoning for the measure at a meeting of the Selectmen and Finance Committee on Tuesday: "Really what this is helping us do is tell the public that the people we've given licenses to, we've checked them out."

Town Attorney Richard Bowen said that the bylaw would apply only to town-issued licenses. Some vendors already have licenses issued by the state.

"If they have a state license ... they can set up without consulting the town," Bowen said. "If they don't have the license, they better show up to Town Hall."

The fingerprinting and background checks would be funded by a fee charged to vendors.

According to Bowen, the bylaw has been "preapproved" by the Attorney General's office.