Rep. Joseph L. Faria's bill would excuse bars that don't serve food from the prohibition.

08:50 AM EST on Friday, January 21, 2005

BY SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- Just a few weeks before a statewide smoking ban is set to take effect, one state legislator is working to exempt a class of bars from the prohibition.

Journal photo / Connie Grosch

State Rep. Joseph L. Faria, D-Central Falls, says several bar owners in his district have complained about the new antismoking law.

Rep. Joseph L. Faria has introduced a bill that would exempt any bar that does not serve food from the ban.

The law -- which takes effect March 1 -- prohibits smoking in just about every public enclosed space including offices, malls, restaurants, bars and bowling alleys. Smoking would be allowed in a handful of places including cigar bars and sections of Lincoln Park and Newport Grand.

As part of a compromise to pass the legislation last year, lawmakers also temporarily exempted some small bars and private clubs with class C and D liquor licenses until Oct. 1, 2006. The class C and D facilities must have 10 or fewer employees to be exempt.

Class D establishments -- such as a Veterans of Foreign Wars post -- are exempt as they are nonprofit or charitable corporations with a defined membership and "not ordinarily a place of public accommodation."

There are about 35 class C license holders in the state and about 275 class D facilities. Exactly how many of them would fit the exemption is not clear.

The temporary exemption compromise does not appease Faria.

The Central Falls Democrat said several bar owners in his district have complained about the law, fearing that "they're going to lose quite a bit of their revenue." He said most of these bars have an owner who is also the sole employee.

Faria said the decision to go smokefree should be left up to the market conditions.

"As a former smoker, I'm not opposed to doing away with smoking because if a local neighborhood bar has smoking and I don't want to go in there, I will not go in there," he said. "Customers who go in there, they have the option not to go in there."

Kevin O'Flaherty, director of government relations and advocacy for the American Cancer Society in Rhode Island, said his group and others who fought for the smoking ban "were expecting some attempts to weaken legislation this year."

"We're going to work just as hard to protect the legislation as we did to pass it," O'Flaherty said. "This is not something that we're going to go quietly on. . . . Once you start carving out more exceptions, then the law just become a shambles of what it was."

O'Flaherty noted that one of the reasons the bill passed was because the General Assembly promised a "level playing field" to restaurants and bars.

"I wouldn't think it would be a good idea to try and backtrack on that," he said.

Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, who sponsored the House version of the bill, was not optimistic about passing Faria's bill.

"I don't know if a permanent ban is the way to go," Fox said. "We want everybody to be treated equally, everybody to be on a level playing field."

Fox, D-Providence, said he's "loath to try to change it. It's not even implemented yet."