TOPEKA Kan. A proposed Kansas law that would ban smoking statewide in most enclosed public and work places, while exempting some restaurants and bars that pay for the privilege, won’t be battled by a major hospitality trade group but has some clean air advocates fuming.
House Bill 2642 was introduced in the Kansas Legislature in Topeka last week by the Committee on Health and Human Services chaired by Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita.
As law, HB 2642 would permit restaurateurs and bar, casino and private club owners to designate their entire establishment a smoking section – as long as they pay an annual exemption fee equal to $1 per square foot of area designated for that activity. It also would enable them to create or continue using enclosed smoking sections served by dedicated ventilation systems.
The proposed measure would require businesses and clubs to post signs that state their smoking policies and prohibit minors from entering establishments that permit smoking throughout or enclosed smoking rooms in venues with smoking and non-smoking areas.
Don Sayler, chief executive and president of the 1,000-member Kansas Restaurant & Hospitality Association in Wichita, said his group believes that business owners should have the final say about how they meet the demands of patrons related to smoking and non-smoking policies. Describing HB 2642 as “patterned after a compromise ban passed earlier in Wichita,” he said, “the association is going to take a neutral approach to it because it meets three conditions we were concerned about.”
Among the concerns answered by HB 2642, Sayler explained, is that any statewide ban preempt, or nullify, existing city and county measures to ensure uniformity of regulations and competitive fairness. Also important to association, he said, is that any such state law does not preclude outdoor smoking sections and that it does include an indoor enclosed-smoking-section option, as some KRHA members have significant investments in such facilities.
“Our primary concern with the new bill [HB 2642] is that it overrides the 36 local smoke free ordinances approved by Kansas communities over the past ten years,” Jake Lowen, a spokesman for Clean Air Kansas, said of the proposed law’s preemption language.
Such statements, aside, the exemptions are a point of contention for Clean Air Kansas, a coalition of more than a dozen medical, insurance, governmental and local and national non-profit health groups. “The fee or licensing provision allows businesses to buy their way out of protecting their employees and the public from secondhand smoke,” Lowen said.
Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson, a Democrat, went so far as to call HB 2642 a “fraud” during a Friday press conference, the Associated Press reported. Citing support by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce for his vision of a statewide ban without business exemptions, Parkinson said in a written statement that such widespread backing “makes this year the year for Kansas to join the majority of other states and ban smoking in public places.”
The introduction of HB 2642 in Kansas followed the recent unveiling of a bi-partisan measure in the Missouri House of Representatives, House Bill 1766, that proposes a statewide ban on smoking in enclosed public and work places, including restaurants and bars.
HB 1766 does not include preemption or exclusionary language and so would leave in place any existing local smoking regulations and allow the adoption of alternative measures by cities and counties going forward. Given the lack of such language, and that a smoking ban approved by St. Louis County voters last fall includes exemptions for casino floors and some bars, the campaign for HB 1766 may not get a pass from the Missouri Restaurant Association.
Bob Bonney, chief executive officer of the Missouri Restaurant Association in St. Louis, Friday reiterated his group’s earlier position that it “would stand down and not publicly oppose” a proposed statewide smoking ban only if it “applies equally to all employers, without exception.”
Adoption of the proposed statewide bans on smoking in restaurants in Missouri and Kansas would make them the 31st and 32nd states to adopt such measures, American Lung Association statistics show. Included in that total is North Carolina, where restaurants and bars fell under a statewide ban on smoking Jan. 2, and Michigan, where such businesses will be covered by a statewide ban as of May 1.
In some of the 30 states that now ban smoking in restaurants, such as in Virginia, operators may permit smoking in walled off areas with separate ventilation systems, as is proposed in Kansas. According to the American Lung Association, all but five of the 30 states now banning smoking in restaurants, also prohibit smoking in freestanding bars.
Contact Alan Liddle at [email protected].
