A state lawmaker says a small group of legislators is quietly assembling a compromise to allow gambling devices in adult-only establishments as a way to ease bar owners’ concerns about Iowa’s new smoking ban.

Rep. Brian Quirk, D-New Hampton, said allowing limited and “heavily regulated” gambling machines in bars could help offset a decline in business that some bar owners complain is a direct result of the smoking ban, which went into effect in July.

Here is the IDPH news release:

In the first two months since the Smokefree Air Act went into effect, the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) has received more than 4,300 calls and e-mails from business owners and the public. The vast majority—about 80 percent—have been from people with questions about how to comply with the new law. Fewer than 1,000 have been complaints about potential violations of the law, and only 6 have resulted in a visit by law enforcement.

“These figures reflect just how effective education has been in enforcing this new law,” said IDPH Director Tom Newton. “There are a limited number of cases, however, where we have had to move beyond education in our enforcement efforts.”

The Smokefree Air Act stipulates that the law be enforced by IDPH or its designee. In nearly every case, compliance has been achieved by working with business owners and others to help them understand their requirements under the law. This has included making phone calls, providing fact sheets, and in a few cases, sending formal letters of potential violations. Recently, the department has been working with the Attorney General’s Office, the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division, and local law enforcement to actively pursue a small number of businesses that are intentionally breaking the law.

Lynn Walding, administrator of the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division, emphasized the need to ensure that those few establishments do comply with the law. “Iowa’s liquor license holders are held to a high standard, are subject to strict federal, state and local regulation, and are expected to comply with all such laws. This includes Iowa’s Smokefree Air Act.” Walding added that possible penalties for violating the law include a civil fine up to $1,000, a suspension of the liquor license up to one year, or the revocation of the license.

Not so in Clinton, which seems to be something of a front line in a brewing war over the Iowa smoking ban, with a local bar organization joining a lawsuit to challenge the new law and several bars reportedly violating it to keep angry customers from walking out the doors after half a beer.

At a recent city council meeting in Clinton, one councilman used a liquor-license renewal request for a bar, Paul’s Tap, to report the establishment for an alleged violation of the smoking ban the councilman said he witnessed. The liquor license was approved, but the debate highlighted confusion over the ban and local government’s role in enforcing it.Statewide rules from the Iowa Department Of Public Health, the agency in charge of implementing the ban, are out, but they are in draft form, with a comment period still open.

Clinton isn’t the only place where local government is dealing with the law.

In the wake of the July 1 implementation of the statewide indoor and public property smoking ban, Carroll City Council members Monday will focus on rules for city parks and the golf course – as well as other matters related to the law.

Council members expect to take no action on the measure but rather plan to review the law with Carroll City Attorney David Bruner and see where local authority may apply within the law.

“I would think they probably would want to take a look at the golf course, the park issue,” Bruner said.

The Iowa law bans smoking in all indoor places, with some exceptions for casino gaming areas, the veterans home, hotel rooms and limited areas.

Smoking is prohibited in many outdoor public areas, particularly those places that are publicly owned.

While the statewide law would supercede any local action, there is some room for decisions in the council chambers, Bruner said.

His interpretation – and that of many other city officials around the state – is that the council can determine whether smoking is allowed on the golf course, even though it is clearly banned in the clubhouse.

“I think the council could allow that – on the course of play they could allow smoking,” Bruner said.

“Municipalities can exempt the outdoor grounds (of golf courses) from the act, reports WQAD television in the Quad Cities. “Scott County exempted Glenn’s Creek Golf Course from the ban, and Bettendorf exempted Palmer Hills Golf Course. But Davenport council members have not yet taken any action regarding Emeis, Red Hawk or Duck Creek golf courses. And, for the most part, the ban isn’t going over well with golfers.”

Then there is the matter of parks.

“My interpretation is obviously no smoking in park shelterhouses and surrounding grounds,” Bruner said.

But the council could go further and ban smoking in all areas of city parks. Or the council could conceivably look at making some parks smoking and others non-smoking.

LeMars is dealing with the same issue before the Carroll City Council.

“The golf course and parks are what (LeMars) City Attorney Joe Flannery described as ‘big questions’ in the No Smoking ban scenario with the possibility existing that the city council could act to allow smoking on the holes of the golf course as well as in grassy park areas,” reports the LeMars Daily Sentinel.

Bruner said the smoking ban would apply to the Carroll Family Aquatic Center now under construction as well as the Youth Sports Complex.

As it stands, the law is enforced by the Iowa Department of Public Health as a civil matter. Bruner said the city may have to deal with the issue later if lawmakers alter the smoking ban to make it a simple misdemeanor for a violation, a move that would bring in local law enforcement at a different level of intensity.

It is Bruner’s interpretation that smokers can still light up in their cars on all city property, and the city hall parking lot could be ruled a smoking area.

“I think you can always smoke in your car wherever it is located,” Bruner said.

“It’s not just business rights,” said Brian Froehlich, owner of Fro’s Pub & Grub in Wilton, about 12 miles north of Muscatine. “It’s personal rights.”Froehlich said the debate over the ban in the mainstream media has largely been skewed to supporters — whom he believes have engaged in a coordinated effort on newspaper blogs and other places to drown out the voices of small business owners and the loyal smokers who have kept many a small-town bar alive for decades.

“They’re using these blogs to spread their propoganda,” Froehlich told Iowa Independent.

He’s joined a bar owners’ association from Clinton, Iowa, and others in a lawsuit challenging the ban. Former GOP U.S. Senate candidate George Eichhorn is representing the group.

Here is The Des Moines Register on the lawsuit:

On the same day a new statewide smoking ban went into effect, several bar and restaurant owners filed a petition in Polk County District Court seeking to overturn the ban.

The Iowa Bar Owners Coalition, based in Clinton County; the Clinton Organized Bar and Restaurant Association; Froehlich Properties; and longtime smoker Ron Oveson filed the petition in Des Moines on Tuesday.

The group’s attorney, George Eichhorn, said he’s seeking a temporary injunction on the enforcement of the ban until the case can go to trial. No court date has been set, but Eichhorn said he hoped it would be within the next 18 months.

“I’m a freedom fighter,” Froehlich told Iowa Independent.

He has a Web site for other bar owners for organizating against the ban but there is no public access — so they can steer clear from “prying eyes.”

Froehlich said his organization may become involved in political races as well.

As employees entered the south entrance of a busy West Des Moines office building on Tuesday, the familiar smell of cigarette smoke was gone.

So were the chatty smokers who usually gathered there daily for breaks and lunch outside the building entrance that was affectionately known by all as “the smokers’ entrance.”

The landscape of the parking lot was transformed on the first day of Iowa’s Smokefree Air Act, which went into effect July 1, 2008 and prohibits smoking in public places, workplaces and some outdoor areas. Instead, workers sat in solitary confinement inside their personal vehicles puffing away. Some sat with the windows cracked. Others, perhaps more defiantly, stood outside their cars. Puffing away alone.

Throughout the busy office building, some employees quizzed each other on where it’s still legal to smoke in Iowa. Some complained about the change to their daily routines.

Most non-smokers who used the entrance seemed to go about their day as usual. I thought of the smokers as I went in and out the entrance that day. The ban didn’t have much effect on me so far because I don’t smoke. The main difference I’ve noticed so far is the missing smell of smoke outside the entrance.

But, I couldn’t help but notice the parking lot, which was dotted with solemn smokers lighting up while sitting alone inside their cars.

It looked odd to me. But then I remembered how odd I thought it was that a building would have a dedicated “smokers’ entrance” to begin with — given all that’s known about the dangers of smoking. 

She was searching for a flag, not an American flag, certainly not Iowa’s.

No, this longtime owner of Vic’s Main Tap wanted a Soviet flag to fly outside her bar in protest of the new law.

“I was even asking someone if they had a Soviet flag because I’d hang it out,” Ewoldt said. “It’s getting more communist all the time.”At Kerp’s Tavern in Carroll, Kathy Cavitt, a veteran of the insurance business, was enjoying her last legal cigarettes in the bar she’s patronized for three decades.
It feels strange, she says, to know she won’t be able to smoke a Marlboro Light in there again.

“I think it’s `1984′ – the book,” she says, in a reference to Big Brother.

For her part, Ewoldt estimated that about 50 percent of her patrons are smokers – and the figure climbed much higher on Friday and Saturday nights.

Customers aren’t happy about the ban, she said.

“I’ve already heard a lot of kickback, people saying they might as well stay home,” Ewoldt said. “I don’t blame them at all.”

Ewoldt, who smokes Misty Ultra Lights, has worked at the bar since 1983 – and owned it since 1986.

She’s joined a coalition of bar owners spoiling for a legal fight over the ban.
Her view is that she owns the building, smoking is legal and it should be her call on whether to allow it.

“That’s just what it’s all about,” Ewoldt said. “If you don’t like smoke, then don’t go into the bar. A drink and a cigarette have gone together for years.”

She sees the law as having a dramatic change for what constitutes night life in Audubon.

“It’s going to change it a lot,” Ewoldt said. “People won’t be able to go out and do anything anymore.”

At Kerp’s the Badding family, who have operated the bar since 1977, served customers enjoying their last smokes in the bar, and prepared to box up the ashtrays. Under the law the bar may be able to set up some outdoor patio area for smokers. That’s being considered, said manager Ben Badding.

The Iowa smoking ban allows bars but not restaurants to have patios, and local businesses are reviewing the letter of the law to determine what options, if any, they have to cater to smokers.

At 5:45 p.m. Monday, 15 of the 19 people in Kerp’s were smoking. The ratio of smokers can be even higher at times, said bartender Kipp Kanne. He wasn’t on the clock at the time so Kanne smoked some Marlboro Lights with a cocktail as he talked about the ban.
“All my employees say smoking doesn’t bother them; otherwise they wouldn’t work in a bar,” Ben Badding said.

In some cities that have imposed bans, like New York or Chicago, new nonsmoking clientele have come in to fill the bar stools left empty by the stubborn or resolute smokers.

Badding doesn’t see Carroll having a population base to fill that void of the loyal smoking Kerp’s drinker, should the ban chase them home.

“Carroll people who don’t go out already don’t go out for a reason,” Badding said. “I don’t think smoking in Carroll ever was an issue.”

Badding doesn’t think the urban liberal legislators who drove the ban have any sort of feel for life in rural Iowa.

“They don’t understand that in the farming communities we go out, have a couple of drinks, a couple of cigarettes, and go home,” Badding said.

One Kerp’s customer who said he’ll be spending more time at home because of the ban is Terry Olson.

“More time on the deck, without a doubt,” Olson said when asked how he would deal with the ban. “I enjoy cigarettes when I drink. The good news is my friends say we’re going to spend more time on the deck.”

Roy Osterlund, whose family will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Ossy’s Show Club in Carroll, said he hears people complain about the ban, but he’s betting they won’t stay away.

“I’ve had a lot of customers say they’re going to sit at home in the garage,” Osterlund said. “I really don’t think that will last too long.”

Osterlund said that like Badding he’s eyeing a possible patio area or the reopening of a one-time volleyball area outside of the bar complex as a smokers’ cove.

Both Badding and Osterlund said they spent thousands of dollars in recent years on air-exchange systems to remove smoke, investments that are now obsolete.

“We did it for five years of use, and now it just sits there – starting tomorrow,” Badding said Monday night.

Jett Alex, who along with his wife, Holly, owns the Club House Bar & Grille in Carroll, is already in adaptation mode. He’s using the ban to promote more food and a family atmosphere. The business now has a regular salad bar and plans for special prime rib dinners.

With the smokers gone, Alex has a message for moms and dads: Bring the kids.

“We like the drinkers, but during the day, when they’re not here, bring the family in,” Alex said.

At the Carroll Country Club, manager Nate Pettitt doesn’t expect much pushback associated with the ban. There will be no smoking in the bar or on the patio, but it will permitted on the golf course.

He’s working with Carroll attorney and club board member Eric Neu on the specifics of the law and how it will be enforced. But whatever the final rules are, Pettitt expects a smooth transition.

“In our case I think it will be somewhat self-governing,” Pettitt said.

Tonight is the first men’s league under the ban, and if someone forgets about the ban and lights up on the patio or in the bar, “there will be enough people who don’t smoke who make the comment,” Pettitt said.

(Photo: Kipp Kanne, a bartender at Kerp’s Tavern in Carroll smokes a Marlboro Light on the last day for legal smoking in Iowa bars Monday.)

Sinatra died in 1998, and we’ve made it a decade with the philosopher-king of love and loss, the crooner with spot-on instincts in the world of handling a punch in the gut and make it to work the next day.

Now, thanks to Mother Culver and the lawmaking picknoses in Des Moines, today we’re mourning the passing of Sinatra’s defiant prop, the cigarette, as a statewide smoking ban faces its first night.

“What would Frank do?”

I think we know.An under-appreciated part of our culture died last night. Small-town bars are supposed to be a bit irreverent, dimly lit places to escape the bully boss, pending divorce, or the drudgery of a working Joe life. Smoking is an essential part of this for many Iowans – 15 out of the 19 people I counted in Kerp’s Tavern just before 6 p.m. Monday.

At one time, but not so much anymore, the rural Iowa bar took our social ranks, our vanities and high-hatting of others, and crushed them like so much ice in a blender.
The farmer with his Pall Malls eased up to the bar with the banker and his Camels – and argued with the newspaperman who smokes American Spirits. They wondered about things like why Magic Johnson hasn’t died of AIDS yet or what’s the deal with the city council on the parks  building or is it a fair bet on the golf tournament to take Tiger Woods against the field.

We are in increasingly cocooned lives, an Internet-connected self-isolation, in which differences, someone’s bad habit or annoying trait, are to be treated as nothing short of bubonic.

That considered, you may not have been to one of west-central Iowa’s homespun haunts for a while.

But in your mind’s eye you can picture the bartender, a 50-something weary wise woman who dishes salty comments as naturally as she ladles gravy from the crock pot in the back on your chicken fried steak. She smokes and has for 30 or 40 years.

It’s just what she does. No real explanation. Shouldn’t do it. Tried to quit, once or twice. Just didn’t take. Maybe it was the divorce.

She’s seen it all, heard tales in her tiny town taller than the scrapers of the cities she planned to visit, someday, when she can get someone to cover the bar. Yes, she’ll still be there today. But she’s not the same without those Marlboro Menthol 100s. And don’t try to tell her she’s better sans smokes because she’s not looking to turn 95. She just wants to get through the day.

And she knows that’s the mindset of the customer in what until today had been a last refuge for the convivial smoker.

What she understands that the Nanny Staters at the Iowa Department of Public Health, and the Johnny Hall Monitors in the Iowa Senate don’t is that life isn’t supposed to be fair, that clean living isn’t a sure ticket to longevity and plenty of sinners outlive their Puritan friends.

In the mid-1970s, when I was around 7 years old, my parents, not understanding the depth of my sports obsession, imposed a Monday Night Football rule of epic cruelty. I could watch the games only until halftime – about 9:30.

Did I ever miss some endings. I remember thinking then that when I was all grown up one of the best things about life surely would be the privilege of watching Monday Night Football all the way to the end, and even into overtime.

I smoked a few cigarettes after work Monday at Kerp’s – my last legal cigarette in an Iowa bar, I guess you could say.

But at some point in the night I heard my name.

It must be halftime.

And Mother Culver is calling with his condescending new law in hand.

Put out the cigarette, Doug. You are 7 years old again, he says.

(Photo: The author enjoys a final American Spirit cigarette in Kerp’s Tavern in Carroll,a place next door the newspaper that he’s frequented for 20 years.)

“In the law, bars can have smoking on their patio,” said Bonnie Mapes, director of Tobacco Use, Prevention and Control with the Iowa Department of Public Health. “What’s being determined right now is what is a bar.”In other states and cities with smoking bans, the distinction between restaurants and bars has been drawn largely based on percentage sales of food. Mapes is giving no clues about how this will work in Iowa, though.

“We are close to coming up with a definition,” she said.

Mapes said draft rules will be made public soon but she provided no date.

One major issue will be the protocol the Iowa Department of Public Health will use to enforce the ban.

Mapes urges business owners to refrain from adding patios or taking other innovative measures until the final rules are released.

“We are counseling patience,” Mapes said.

For example, at this point, although the law would appear to allow smoking on patio areas of bars but not restaurants, the IDPH’s division of Tobacco Use, Prevention and Control cannot provide a definitive answer. There’s also no official word yet on exactly who is going to enforce the law and how it will be done. The 800-number (for reporting violators) and Web site dealing with provisions are not up and running.

“We know people have lots of concerns,” said Bonnie Mapes, director of state Tobacco Control. “This is a huge cultural shift.”

She has fielded more than 70 calls and emails from businesses and others with questions about the law that have been “all over the place.”

Mapes is asking for patience as Gov. Chet Culver just signed the ban Tuesday.

At least two small-town bar owners in the Carroll-area have gone so far as to ask the media about the legality of building patio areas outside of their bars to accommodate their smoking base of customers.

Mapes said officials are working on an answer to that, and when told that bar owners want to get moving because of the July 1 ban, she said her office is working as expeditiously as possible.

“Ten weeks isn’t a lot of time,” she said.

But Mapes, whose office was created in 2000 with master settlement money from tobacco companies, has been involved with implementing bans in other states, like Colorado and California. She says there is more than enough time to get the ban handled right and is now being cautious as some questions – like bar patios – go to the intent of bill drafters.

Another key unanswered question has to do with the protocol for reporting and enforcing offenses: who is going to investigate violations and what type of evidence is needed?

Under the new law, the health department is charged with overseeing the task, but Mapes said it is possible local law enforcement will be asked to play a role.

“I would say that’s possible,” she said.

But she said the workload with enforcement isn’t expected to be crushing based on the experiences of other states. No new state employees are expected to be needed to deal with the ban, she said.

“This does not cause thousands upon thousands of complaints and violations,” Mapes said. “We’re 24th now (state to implement ban). This is not something new.”

She said more people likely will quit to deal with the ban and provided the following number: 1 (800) Quit Now. Free smoking-cessation counseling is available. Those with specific questions on the provisions of the ban may Brent Saron with the IDPH at (515) 281-7739.

In fact, two of Culver’s top spokespeople already are on record heralding this week`s passage of the strict smoke ban that, of course, exempts the money-minting casinos, but tells owners of bars in Audubon and Carroll and Storm Lake and Denison, places often peopled with a majority of smokers, to get health-club, celery stalk-sucking religion by July 1.Culver’s surrogates tell us to expect Iowa’s Democratic governor to sign House File 2212 next Tuesday amid much fanfare and here-heres.

But Culver is missing a defining opportunity to reach out to rural Iowa, to show with a veto (or a silent pen) that he understands there is a  difference between Clive and Carroll, Iowa City and Storm Lake, that there is an urban nannyism, a know-bettering in this legislation which clearly will hit long-standing taverns in shot-and-a-beer rural Iowa more than the city establishments.

Stick with your initial instinct, governor, and don’t sign this legislation. Send it back to the divided chambers (the votes were close) and ask for a local-control bill, the plan you talked about in your Condition of the State speech – and the one you told me in Carroll a few weeks ago still made the most sense.

Use this high-profile bill to send a message to rural Iowa: We matter. Our small businesses are important.

We don’t want to live like automatons in the Des Moines suburbs.

Show lawmakers in both parties that you are relevant. Be a maverick. Don’t sign this bill. Much of rural Iowa will not forget it – and where are the anti-smoking forces going to go in 2010 – to U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, or another conservative, free-market Republican challenger who will use the ban against you?

Already challenged by well-documented population loss, higher gas prices and other factors, the smoking ban likely will be a death blow to small town institutions.

How can you exempt Prairie Meadows, which will turn more millions based on that loophole, and then force it on small-town bar owners, who are fighting for hundreds of dollars?

The bill fails to take into account a reality of life in small-town Iowa.

When the smokers are chased out of the taverns (they are addicted so quitting overnight is not likely) there is no replacement class of non-smoking customers waiting in the wings to fill the bar stools. It’s not like New York City or Chicago where a ready population of non-smokers can compensate for the business losses.

What should anger all Iowans is that legislators used the smoking debate as a diversion from truly meaningful work that would lift our state.

With the potential to turn Iowa into something of a Saudi Arabia of renewable energy, and pressing educational concerns, the signature accomplishment of the 2008 session is a law that will take a cigarette out of the hands of a working stiff in Le Mars who is just trying to get through a tough week with the comfort of a few Buds and a convivial smoke.

Legislators can count.

There are more non-smokers than smokers.

This one is a crowd-pleaser for the majority of Iowans for whom broader issues like property rights and individual freedom and rural-versus-urban dynamics don’t register.

But many of us in rural Iowa are paying attention. Culver could make a huge political statement with a veto of the smoking by casting it as an attack on rural freedoms.

Governor, at least consider this: buck conventional wisdom, show the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate it’s your show – that the Senate majority leader isn’t the shadow governor.

Kill this bill.

It will not be forgotten for a generation of Novembers in small towns out here in western Iowa, governor.