Kansas City, Mo. — The Kansas City Council voted 8-5 Tuesday to pass a limited smoking ban for restaurants, bars and many other public places.
"It's a very good first step," said Councilman Charles Eddy, whose finance committee first pushed the issue.
Smoking ban foes appeal to city (11-17-04)
6News video: Commissioners to discuss smoking compromiseBut supporters of a ban said they were disappointed with the ordinance, which they said had been weakened since its introduction a month ago.
The ordinance originally would have banned smoking in enclosed workplaces, bowling alleys, pool halls, bingo parlors and at least three out of every four hotel rooms. It also would have prohibited smoking in bars and restaurants if cities containing half of the population in the six counties that make up metro Kansas City passed similar bans.
But business owners, worried the smoking ban could chase off customers, lobbied against provisions in the ordinance, persuading members of the council's finance committee to remove or reduce some of the prohibitions.
The ordinance now allows workplaces to have designated smoking areas as long as those areas have their own heating, cooling and ventilation systems that bring in outside air.
Hotels will be able to allow smoking in more than 25 percent of their rooms if a convention or other large-scale event requests those rooms and as long as the hotel cleans those rooms before providing them to nonsmoking guests.
Those provisions go into effect May 31.
Officials also increased the threshold of cities needing to pass the ban for bars and restaurants to those containing 85 percent of the population of the six counties that make up the metro area.
Eddy said that threshold was necessary to prevent bars and restaurants in one part of the metro area from having a competitive advantage over bars and restaurants in another section. He said that if the council hadn't passed the ordinance, voters might have pushed it through with a referendum, which would have only affected bars and restaurants within city limits.
"We need this to be implemented as a region," he said.
But supporters said they didn't buy that argument and noted that some of the larger cities in the region, such as Olathe, Kan., and Independence, have not shown much interest in a smoking ban.
"I think Kansas City had a great opportunity to be a leader on this issue," said David Knowles, public advocacy director for the American Lung Association of Missouri. "The most important thing to be considered is public health, and this ordinance that passed does nothing to impact public health."
Supporters and opponents of the Lawrence, Kan., smoking ban weren't sure what effect Kansas City's move would have, if any, in their city. Since city commissioners approved the ban, which went into effect July 1, they recently said they would listen to compromise proposals.
What Kansas City passed really isn't a smoking ban, said Phil Bradley, executive director of the Lawrence-based Kansas Licensed Beverage Assn., and one of the leading opponents of the Lawrence ban. Kansas City officials are recognizing that there is an economic effect when you have one area with a smoking ban and another area that doesn't have one, Bradley said. They also realize some businesses need to accommodate some of their customers by allowing another room for them, he said.
"It shows how extreme the ban here is, and by not acknowledging an economic impact, someone's keeping their eyes closed," Bradley said.
Chuck Magerl, owner of Free State Brewing Co., 636 Mass., said he hoped Kansas City's decision would convince Lawrence commissioners to review their ordinance.
The measure passed in Kansas City surprised Carrie Pohl, coordinator of Clean Air Lawrence, an organization that pushed for the Lawrence smoking ban. She didn't think there would be an effect on Lawrence commissioners.
"I think our city commission will see they probably did the best thing they could do in a small community and be fair to all business owners," Pohl said.
Last summer opponents of the Lawrence ban began collecting signatures for a petition in an effort to put the smoking ban issue on a city ballot. The petition needs the names of at least 4,000 registered city voters. So far no petition has been turned in.
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