ST. LOUIS COUNTY • A year ago, St. Louis County Councilman Mike O’Mara said the county’s smoking ban needed to be “tweaked” in regard to its many exemptions.
On Friday, that tweak turned into a call for a major alteration as O’Mara announced he would introduce legislation at Tuesday’s council meeting to remove all exemptions from the ban, including those for the county’s two gambling venues, River City Casino and Hollywood Casino St. Louis.
“My goal is to get this ordinance cleaned up so that everyone in the county is on a level playing field,” O’Mara, D-Florissant, said Friday. “I’ve heard from too many owners of bars and restaurants who have convinced me that it is unfair that some businesses have the exemption while others, sometimes located right up the street, don’t.”
He added, “And there’s certainly the health issue.”
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O’Mara’s action comes a year after the Tobacco-Free St. Louis Coalition asked him to remove the exemptions, citing a study showing a disproportionately high incidence of heart attacks and lung diseases in North County, which has the most exemptions from the county ban.
There are 135 establishments in the county that have exemptions.
Pat Lindsay, executive director of Tobacco-Free St. Louis, said O’Mara’s proposal came as a surprise.
“We were not feeling support from most of the council,” Lindsay said. “This is unexpected but excellent news and about time it happened. We need to protect all people from secondhand smoke.”
O’Mara said he was not sure how his proposal would go over with fellow council members.
“We’ll give business owners a chance to come in and plead their cases,” he said. “My intention is not to hurt St. Louis County economically, but I think we need to start from scratch and remove all exemptions.”
Representatives of the River City and Hollywood casinos could not be reached for comment.
Councilmen Steve Stenger, D-South County, and Pat Dolan, D-Richmond Heights, said they expected to support the proposal.
“Without having seen the legislation, I will say that I like the idea of it,” said Stenger, who has consistently said he favored removing all exemptions. “It would seem to accomplish what the original intent was behind the legislation.”
However, the council’s new chairwoman, Kathleen Burkett, D-Overland, said she has not changed her mind about the ban.
“I opposed it from day one, and I still oppose it,” Burkett said. “This is something the voters did. They made their decision to include exemptions, and I’m through with it.”
Councilwoman Colleen Wasinger, R-Town and Country, declined to comment until she had seen the legislation. Councilmen Greg Quinn, R-Ballwin, and Hazel Erby, D-University City, could not be reached.
Voters approved the ban by a two-thirds majority in 2009, and it took effect Jan. 2, 2011. Establishments are eligible for exemptions if food sales total less than 25 percent of the annual total sales of food and beverage.
The ordinance also exempted gambling floors at casinos.
St. Louis enacted a smoking ban in concert with the county. The city ban, however, allowed exemptions to bars with a serving area of less than 2,000 square feet, requiring patrons 21 and older, and with food sales less than 25 percent of total food and alcohol sales.
The city is due to end all exemptions in 2016 and hasn’t shown interest in changing that sunset.
Illinois has banned smoking, including in casinos and bars, since 2008.
The County Council can change the ordinance without submitting it to another public vote.
In crafting the legislation, council members said they wanted exemptions to protect small neighborhood bars whose owners feared a smoking ban would drive them out of business.
But included among the venues that currently have exemptions in the county are large bar-restaurants and bowling alleys.
Almost from the day the law took effect, County Executive Charlie A. Dooley began complaining about exemptions and encouraging the County Council to change the situation.
Mac Scott, a spokesman for Dooley, said Friday that Dooley continued to favor removing all exemptions.
Some bars, such as the Pirates Cove Bar & Grill in Florissant, say ending exemptions would be unfair to businesses that bought equipment to contain cigarette smoke to designated areas.
Dianna Reising, a bartender at Pirates Cove, said O’Mara’s proposal was a case of politics at play.
“People in Florissant want to come to a bar and smoke,” she said.
Bill Hannegan, a longtime opponent of the smoking ban, said exemptions should remain in certain cases.
“I believe the bar owner has a private property right to allow smoking if he’s taken reasonable efforts to address secondhand smoke,” Hannegan said.
Marty Ginsburg, owner of the Sports Page restaurant in Chesterfield, once allied himself with Hannegan and blasted the smoking ban at County Council meetings. But Ginsburg, who is not a smoker, has since said that his health improved markedly in the absence of secondhand smoke at his bar.
“I welcome removing all exemptions,” Ginsburg said. “It will mean that people can now promote their business based on their business, not whether you can smoke there.”
Nicholas J.C. Pistor and Denise Hollinshed of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Paul Hampel covers St. Louis County for the Post-Dispatch.
