'Local control' could decide fate of anti-smoking bill - UPDATED

Publication Date: 2007-03-15

• Publication:North Platte Bulletin

Lawmakers pondered a proposed compromise Tuesday that would allow communities to opt out of what was originally intended to be a statewide smoking ban.

“We are amenable to reasonable compromise,� said Senator Joel Johnson of Kearney, chief sponsor of the measure (LB395), during debate Monday.

The compromise proposed by Senator Mick Mines of Blair centers on allowing a vote of local residents, or the local governing body, to remove a community from the restrictions of the state law.

“It’s a local community decision and that’s where we’re going on a compromise,’ Mines told his colleagues.

“The bill advances with this, not without it, in my opinion,� Mines said.

The compromise offers something meaningful to both sides.

Its enactment would put a tough, statewide smoking ban in place – but it would still allow individual communities to have the final decision on maintaining it.

The big “however� involved disparate views of what “local control� means.