Personal and individual rights even for minorities are a fundamental precept of our constitutional republic.
Montana,
many of whose residents are the descendents of pioneers and
homesteaders and who pride themselves in their individualism and
independent thinking, is being challenged by a massively financed
national social engineering agenda.
In the past three years,
indoor smoking bans have been proposed in five of Montana's major
cities and are being considered in at least three others. And taverns
and gaming establishments, the most unlikely of places, have become a
focal point of the debates.
So far, local smoking ordinances
have been enacted in four local jurisdictions in Montana, in order:
Missoula, Great Falls, Helena and Bozeman. The vast majority (about 90
percent) of restaurants in all these jurisdictions are already
smoke-free. Havre city government decided not to consider the issues at
all, allowing free-market forces to work instead.
Butte, too,
considered a smoking ordinance a total ban proposed by the county
health department but backed away from such Draconian measures for
being too dictatorial toward individuals and business owners.
In
Missoula, Great Falls and Bozeman, exemptions were written into
ordinances that allowed smoking in traditional tavern venues where the
owner chose to allow it. Some owners of traditional taverns have chosen
to prohibit smoking.
Apparently, the reasonable approach has
worked well. There are no complaints, civic strife or lawsuits in
cities with exemptions.
Only in Helena was smoking banned
completely in every building accessible to the public. The negative
effects there were immediate and violently felt by owners of
establishments licensed for adult beverages and gambling.
Business
fell off dramatically and may have cost owners upwards of $4 million in
total sales' it was reported by the Gambling Control Division that it
cost licensed gaming operators $843,000 in gaming revenue in just six
months.
Currently, the city is torn between private property
rights/adult choice advocates and social engineers who wish to
legislate and micro-manage personal behavior...and private businesses.
The
Helena ban was overturned on constitutional grounds that it did not
offer those charged with violating the ordinance a chance for a jury
trial. That decision has been appealed by the city to district court.
In
the meantime, licensed operators who stood to lose their business'
equity and real estate and were headed toward insolvency, filed a suit
contending their property was being illegally devalued or taken.
That suit is on hold in district court while another suit is awaiting a decision from the state Supreme Court.
When
it became clear, after just six months in place, that Helena's total
smoking ban was wreaking havoc on the city's hospitality businesses,
and would substantially reduce to the state the flow of needed gaming
tax revenues, a bi-partisan majority in the 2003 Legislature enacted HB
758, which made the state's Clean Indoor Air Act pre-eminent when it
came to businesses licensed by the state for gaming.
HB 758 in
effect exempted gaming establishments from smoking bans, unless owners
chose to prohibit smoking on their own. Under current state law, if a
local jurisdiction were to reduce gaming revenues, other jurisdictions
would be required to fund those losses.
Further, if a single
source of revenue was reduced by five percent or more, the state could
simply make major reallocations of revenues already promised to local
government through reimbursement. While Helena alone could likely not
force gaming revenues to that five percent threshold, legislators
realized one or two other jurisdictions could.
But the City of
Helena challenged HB 758's constitutionality on several grounds in
district court, then asked the state Supreme Court to take
jurisdiction. Briefs from the smoking prohibitionists and the Attorney
General's office, which is defending the law vigorously, were filed in
late 2003 and early 2004.
Oral arguments were presented to the
court in April of 2004. A decision was expected by some knowledgeable
observers in August, perhaps as late as September. As of early
December, no decision has been forthcoming.
Source:
Publications of Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite
102, Butte, MT 59701, including the monthly industry trade journal The Montana Tavern Times,
the Extras, a series of in-depth special supplements to the Tavern Times.