After months of campaigning to abolish smoking from bars and casinos in East Baton Rouge Parish, the Smoke-free EBR coalition came up one vote short at Wednesday’s council meeting. Some of the six members who voted against the ban say they do not believe they should tell adults or private businesses what to do.
The council deadlocked at 6-6 after more than two hours of arguments from both sides, including musicians and doctors in favor of the ban and casino executives opposing the ban. Council members Chandler Loupe, Buddy Amoroso, Ryan Heck, Trae Welch, Scott Wilson and John Delgado voted against the item, while ordinance sponsors Erika Green, Lamont Cole, Chauna Banks-Daniel, Donna Collins-Lewis, Tara Wicker and Joel Boé voted for it.
Heck says this morning that he could support banning smoking at businesses throughout the city-parish from a public health perspective, but adds the ordinance as presented was poorly written and overreaching.
“It never had a chance,” Heck says. “There were better ways to go about this and they never chose to do it.”
Heck says the coalition never met with or contacted him to discuss the ordinance, nor did they ever approach the casinos—whose representatives argued the ban would hurt their bottom lines—about ways to help casino employees.
Amoroso says he voted against the ordinance because he feels the council should not be in the business of telling adults or private companies what they can and cannot do. For him, it was a matter of personal freedom, private property and personal choice.
Delgado says his vote against the ban was for financial reasons. Along with the businesses that could have been negatively impacted, city-parish sales tax collections could have fallen. He says he would have supported a smoking ban in bars—of which he owns a number in downtown—but could not support one for the casinos since it’s a different business model.
He points to New Orleans, where the city council has banned smoking in bars and casinos. Delgado says data shows the city’s bars saw no noticeable drop in revenue, while Harrah’s New Orleans Hotel and Casino experienced a 20% revenue drop.
“As their revenues decrease, our revenues decrease,” Delgado says. “A 20% drop in revenues would be tantamount to a $2 million loss. How do we make up that kind of hit?”
The city-parish Finance Department confirmed Delgado’s math. The three casinos paid roughly $9.85 million in taxes last year, which are based on revenues, and lopping 20% off that number would equal roughly $2 million.
“I know that there’s lot of very good reasons to ban smoking, but you have to look at the total picture,” Delgado says.
Welch says he felt the ordinance was too broad and would have piled more undue regulations on businesses.
“It just was an absolutely bad ordinance the way it was written,” he says.
“We’re clearly disappointed that the council chose arguable statistics for government over definite facts about health care,” Hayden says. “It’s disappointing that the rest of the country is moving in the direction of smoke-free facilities and Baton Rouge already seems to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era.”
—Ryan Broussard
