Did you see Francine DelMonte around town this week?
Byron Brown?
George Maziarz?
Of course you didn't.
Not because our representatives in the state legislature were guzzling old coffee and gobbling No-Doz in a desperate 11th-hour attempt to get their primary job -- passing a state budget -- done on time. The April 1 "deadline" to finalize the annual spending plan became a popular statehouse joke well before the first Gulf War.
Instead, a week before the day the state constitution mandates they behave in a remotely businesslike fashion, our heavy hitters and their colleagues in Albany were busy passing the nation's strictest public smoking ban.
The point here isn't to argue the merits of smoking, or the consequences of second-hand smoke. Most of us who do experiment with tobacco a few dozen times a day understand that we're engaging in expensively self-destructive behavior. Those of us with some semblance of courtesy avoid lighting up around those who don't indulge. And government regulations have already shoved our filthy habit out of offices, airplanes, public buildings and some restaurants.
That, though, apparently wasn't good enough for the virulent anti-smoking lobby, a group matched in self-righteousness only by pro-lifers and Fox News Channel commentators. Instead of finding anything remotely constructive to do with their lives, these good folks have chosen to tell the rest of us how to live our lives.
In driving the ban to fruition, they, and the legislators they so easily manipulated, feigned concern for the health of the bartenders, waiters and waitresses of the Empire State.
Just a couple problems with that.
For one thing, look for the fullest ashtray the next time you're in a tavern (at least during the next four months, until the ban is scheduled to take effect).
Odds are pretty good it will be the one closest to your server.
And by tacking on one more restriction to an already heavily regulated and risky industry, the legislation virtually assures that even more restaurants and bars will go out of business. At least all those displaced servers won't have to worry about the impact of second-hand smoke as they fill out their unemployment applications.
Advocates of the ban point to California as evidence that forbidding smoking doesn't have to be fatal to bars and restaurants. That analogy conveniently ignores that state's weather, which encourages outdoor patios where we heathens can puff away to our heart's content. Somehow, sitting outside in Niagara Falls in January doesn't offer the same appeal.
Even more problematic than the law's impact is the process by which it came to pass. Of a half-dozen bar and restaurant owners surveyed late last week, not one had even heard that Albany was considering such a measure.
That was no accident. The bill's supporters rammed it through committees and floor votes in both the State Assembly and Senate and got it to the governor's desk within a week, making sure that the deal got done before DelMonte, Brown, Maziarz and their colleagues could return home, where they'd be subjected to the pesky objections of the rabble who voted for them.
The chorus of dissent would have been particularly loud in Niagara Falls, since the Seneca Niagara Casino -- already a source of concern for local proprietors -- represents one of the law's loopholes. At least Albany realizes the casino sits on what is now foreign land, something our fearless leaders at City Hall have yet to grasp.
Speaking of loopholes, one of the handful of exceptions betrays the law's elitist nature. For cigar bars, the favored haunts of the well-to-do, as well as posers like our wildly overpaid legislators, it will be business as usual.
So if you enjoy trumpeting your lofty status in life to the world with a $20 Honduran, by all means, puff away.
But if your suicidal vice costs upwards of $5 a pack, thanks to the $1.50 already levied by our guardian angels in Albany, you'd best lock that door and pull those shades. Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno gloated over the legislature's beneficence after Pataki signed the bill.
"Sometimes when you're in government you have to do things for the people whether they like it or not," Bruno sneered. "That's what governing is all about."
The cynic might say that governing is actually about representing constituents, a responsibility blatantly ignored amidst all the self-congratulation. And writing realistic legislation, another neglected element of the process.
Like most state initiatives, the cost of performing this paternal service for we poor, stupid slobs falls upon the counties. There are roughly 1,500 restaurants, bars, diners and coffee shops in Niagara County alone. If every employee of the county health department, the body charged by the legislature with watching our butts, spent all day, every day, trying to make sure that no cigarette gets lit in public, they might get to each establishment a couple times a year.
By threatening a $2,000 fine, payable by the proprietor, for each violation, the parasites in Capital City are clearly betting on self-enforcement.
What they'll get are hastily assembled "private clubs" that will create even more enforcement hassles for the State Liquor Authority, as well as a Prohibition-like disregard for their toothless law by those who choose to ignore it.
And, in the end, a precipitous drop in the tax dollars which feed their addiction.
At least DelMonte, Brown and Maziarz will have at least one "accomplishment" they can point to as a diversion when we ask them why the budget's late.
Again.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 1 2003 |