Lawmakers kill smoking bill: Would have given local governments control
NASHVILLE (AP) — A hundred youngsters who support letting local government control smoking in public places got a lesson about bucking the interests of special interests on Tuesday when a Senate committee defeated their bill 6-3.
“The lobby was just too strong against it,” said Sen. Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville, one of the senators on the losing side of the vote in the State and Local Government Committee. “They tried to confuse the issue by talking about parental rights. It didn’t have anything to do with parental rights. It was completely orchestrated to do what it did, which was kill that bill.
“So the lobbyists earned their money, and the people got screwed.”
The bill, by committee chairman Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, would have removed a provision in state law that says local governments cannot regulate smoking except in government-owned buildings. The committee rolled several bills with the same intent into this one bill.
Cohen said the state pre-empted local control over smoking through “something of a subterfuge” in 1994.
Sen. Jim Kyle, D-Memphis, who sponsored one of the other bills to restore local control over this decision, said the state for the last decade has said it knows better than any and all local governments what’s best for them.
“This is not about the price of tobacco, or smoking in restaurants, it’s about whether people in a community can define how they want to live,” Kyle said. “If you think your city leaders are going to run business off, I think you’re mistaken. But I do think we need local control. Different communities need to decide how they want to live.”
Sen. Jeff Miller, R-Cleveland, opposed the measure on the grounds of government interference.
“It’ll be on the local level, but it’ll still be government interference,” he argued.
Addressing the 100 or so students jammed in the hearing room, he said: “The best way to address this is to band together and not patronize businesses that allow smoking.”
Two of the students from anti-smoking groups around the state were chosen at random to speak to the committee.
“I have faith that local governments could limit the number of young smokers and their access to tobacco,” Drew Smith of Hickman County High School told the committee.
Sen. Thelma Harper, D-Nashville, asked whether that meant the state should take children away from irresponsible parents.
“Absolutely not,” Smith said. “It is a sad fact some people shouldn’t be parents, but (children) need their parents for stability.”
Harper said giving local governments control would mean some smokers would be making the decisions. She didn’t observe that the same is true when the Legislature makes the decision.
In a discussion with student Tassony Woods of Nashville, Harper asked whether businesses should not be allowed to decide about allowing smoking.
“If it was my business there would not be a section for smoking,” Woods said. “You said it was my business.”
To which Harper replied: “But that’s how they feel, too. It’s their business, they bought it, they’re paying the mortgage and the taxes. Should an outside force have the ability to tell them what to do?”
Cohen noted that an outside force had told businesses they had to seat black people and provide accommodations for the disabled. Harper, who is black, encouraged him “to find a different analogy.”
Voting against the bill were Sens. Harper, Miller, Joe Haynes, D-Goodlettsville, Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, Don McLeary, D-Humboldt, and Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville.
Cohen, Burchett, and Sen. Rosalind Kurita, D-Clarksville, voted for it.
After the vote, Whitney Burress, a senior at Clinton High School, said she thought her side’s argument was poorly presented.
“It’s not about restaurants,” she said. “If a city wants to pass a law to ban smoking in public places, it should be able to do that.”
Rhedona Rose, chief lobbyist for the Tennessee Farm Bureau, which opposed the bill along with the state’s restaurant association, said, “It’s not a smoking issue so much as a property rights issue.”
“If I own my own business and pay the taxes I should have the right to decide if it’s smoking or nonsmoking,” she said. “We believe the marketplace will eventually make the decision. I don’t have to go there if the smoke bothers me.”
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On the Net:
See Senate Bill 2155 at Tennessee General Assembly, http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/