Liberty's Blog

Smoking Bans Catching on.

The mostly owned Ferttita districts of Galveston and Kemah are waiting for Houston to decide on a smoking ban ordinance. Aparrently the Councils figure. Ripping off the wording of Houston's ordinance is the way to get a law that is consistant and legal. While we knew that Kemah was taking this aproach it is surprising to find that Galveston is.

Kemah Mayor Bill King said he and other council members are considering a smoking ban, but are waiting to see if neighboring Houston takes the move first. The item has been on the city council agenda twice, deferred both times while Kemah waits on its huge neighbor to the north.

Galveston’s city council has also discussed the possibility, although only informally, said Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas.

“Do I believe it will come up before council at some point in the future? The answer is yes, I do,” she said. “I believe we will wait until Houston passes theirs so that we have a policy we can look at and make it applicable to Galveston.”

Frettita doesn't seem to object to much and we wonder if its because all his restraunts have bars. This might be one more way to put the squeeze on the competition.

Officials with Laundry’s Restaurants, which owns a majority of Kemah’s eateries, said they would be OK with the proposed ban, as long as it mimicked Houston’s.

Last month, Houston Mayor Bill White announced that he was drafting an ordinance to ban smoking in restaurants, but not bars. White said he hoped to have it before the city council by the end of the year. King said Kemah would consider a smoking ban at that time.

“I feel like we need to follow Houston’s lead on this,” he said. “The thing you don’t want to do is create a difference in jurisdictions. Once Houston adopts theirs, I am going to propose adopting exactly what Houston adopted.”

Its strange to me that a bussiness doesn't object to being dictated how to operate by the local authorities. Its wrong,,,

posted by Liberty @ 6:21 AM