PROVIDENCE — As the owner of a company that provides respiratory equipment to people with breathing disorders, Sen. James Doyle didn’t have a second thought about introducing a bill on behalf of the state nurses association to ban smoking at Rhode Island’s two slot parlors.

But that was before the state Budget Office projected the huge impact the ban — slated for a Senate committee hearing Wednesday night — would have on the state’s already shrunken revenues.

Should smoking be banned throughout Twin River and Newport Grand, the Budget Office projects a $36-million revenue loss to the state in the budget year that begins on July 1, and a $37.3-million loss the year after. And that does not count the millions of dollars in potential losses to the slot parlor owners who, in Twin River’s case, have been struggling to stay out of bankruptcy court.

The analysis — which the Senate’s fiscal office refused to release in advance of the hearing — was based on the 12.4-percent plunge in slot revenue at Delaware’s three horse-track “racinos” after a smoking ban went into effect in November 2002.

Doyle, D-Pawtucket, says he now has very “mixed emotions” about pushing the bill. “When I put the legislation in … I looked at it as a black-and-white issue. Is cigarette smoking good? No … But I didn’t realize the impact it would have on the state.”

“Maybe all … sides need to sit down and talk about what, in fact, they can do to protect people’s health without banning smoking,” added cosponsor John Tassoni, D-Smithfield.

And Sen. Maryellen Goodwin, chairwoman of the Senate committee holding the hearing, said: “I’m not a fan of smoking at all. I’d rather see it done away with. But the fiscal impact is quite serious.”

“It’s a tough thing all the way around,” adds Michael Sabitoni, business manager of the Laborers’ International local that represents some Twin River employees. But ultimately, “people make a decision when they go to work there.”

The bill would remove the exemption to the state’s workplace no-smoking law that lawmakers carved out for the two slot parlors in 2004. The two were required to provide designated nonsmoking areas.

Spokespeople for both Newport Grand and Twin River say they have.

Patti Doyle, spokeswoman for Twin River, said the entire second-floor is nonsmoking with 1,115 available machines.

At Newport Grand, the entire first floor is smoke free, and smoking is only allowed in two gambling areas on the second floor “separated from the rest of the facility by glass walls,” said spokesman Saverio Mancini. But Sylvia Weber, the nurse-lobbyist for the Rhode Island State Nurses Association, said her daughter — a casino dealer — wooed her to Twin River for dinner a year or so ago, and she never chose to return because she had to walk through smoke to get to the restaurant.

She intends to cite the results of a May 2009 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the health impact of smoking at casinos. Among the findings: casino dealers were regularly exposed to, and absorbed into their bodies, detectable levels of environmental tobacco smoke [ETS], “including a tobacco-specific carcinogen,” which a previous U.S. surgeon general’s report linked to an increased risk of lung cancer in nonsmokers.

Twin River’s Doyle disputes Webber’s recollection of her one visit to the Lincoln gambling hall, saying in an e-mail that the “only way you go thru smoking area is by entering Twin River via North entrance.”

With reports from Steve Peoples of The Journal State House Bureau

kgregg@projo.com