Here’s the Chron story about what happened regarding the draft ordinance to strengthen Houston’s smoking ban for bars and restaurants.
Bar owners who oppose expanding the city’s smoking ban may have garnered enough support among City Council members to derail a proposal by Mayor Bill White that the council will consider today.
[…]
White, who rarely puts an item on the agenda when he’s not sure he has enough votes for approval, said Tuesday he expects the vote to be close.
“I think the majority on council wants to provide more smoke-free areas for employees. I think the majority of council also thinks there ought to be some limited number of places where people can smoke outside their home,” he said. “But coming up with that limit has been the thing that’s hard to build consensus on.”
[…]
An informal Houston Chronicle poll Tuesday showed members are split: six members, including White, said they plan to vote for the proposal as submitted, and four said they’ll vote against it or try to amend it. Five said they were undecided.
If the majority of council can’t settle on a plan, the proposal could be sent back to the administration, where it could die or be tweaked and placed back on the agenda later.
Several council members said they would consider exempting bars – establishments that draw at at least 60 percent of sales from alcohol – by backing an amendment that Councilwoman Toni Lawrence said she plans to offer at the meeting.
“I just don’t want to overregulate something that’s legal in the United States,” she said.
The amendment would allow bar owners to permit smoking as long as they use a ventilation system and post a sign near the entrance letting potential customers know smoking is permitted there and can be a health hazard. It would only apply to bars in operation Sept. 1; bars opened after that date would have to be smoke-free.
Lawrence said she also would like to require bar owners to provide health insurance for employees, but it is unclear whether that would be legal.
Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, who supports a total ban, said the amendment takes the teeth out of the proposal. “If we exempt bars, then why do anything?” she said.
Of those who said they were undecided, council members Adrian Garcia and Sue Lovell said they were considering supporting the amendment that exempts bars because they worried the ban would hurt those businesses. Council members Pam Holm and Jarvis Johnson expressed the opposite concern: They want the city to go smoke-free but aren’t sure they can support the proposal because it allows for too many exceptions.
Those include outdoor patios; hotel or motel rooms designated for smoking, as long as no more than 35 percent of rooms in a hotel have that designation; private rooms in nursing homes; tobacco shops and cigar bars that meet certain requirements; certain meeting rooms in convention centers, hotels and motels when they’re used for private functions; and private functions held by nonprofit groups in their own facilities.
“We’re not being fair here,” Johnson said. “You’re going to make an exception for some companies but you’re not going to make it for others?”
Council members Addie Wiseman and Michael Berry said they plan to vote against any extension of the ban. Whether to allow smoking should be the decision of the business owner, not the government, Wiseman said.
Here’s the report I wrote yesterday about this. I never did hear back from Council Member Johnson, but will update if I do. A couple of points:
– Council Member Lawrence’s proposal is more clearly defined as “establishments that draw at at least 60 percent of sales from alcohol”. Now that I read that, I wonder if that would cover strip clubs. Assuming they still exist after that lawsuit is decided, of course.
– Based on what’s being said here, I think Council Member Alvarado’s prediction that this will be tagged for a week is accurate. I’ll be a little surprised if something passes today. We’ll see what happens.
UPDATE: As expected, the vote has been delayed for a week.