Smoking ordinance fails to get support in council

An attempt to write tighter rules for smoking in Macon failed again to get through City Council on Tuesday, and council members said it may not be back for some time.
The ordinance narrowly passed the council in May, but Mayor Robert Reichert vetoed it and backers couldn’t muster the 10 votes necessary to override the veto. Following a public hearing, a revised ordinance came back to the council’s Public Safety Committee, but it didn’t have enough support there to make the full council’s agenda.

Nevertheless, Councilwoman Nancy White -- one of the ordinance’s co-sponsors -- said at Tuesday’s pre-council meeting that she intended to move for a vote on it anyway. It takes eight votes to disagree with the committee’s recommendation.
Just before the regular council meeting, however, ordinance backers took a quick head count of council supporters and chose not to risk defeat.
“We didn’t have a full house, so we decided not to play cards,” White said afterward. Proponents might have had eight votes, but they couldn’t be sure. Councilwoman Elaine Lucas, who strongly supported the previous version, was absent.
No council member made a motion to take up the ordinance. Both White and Councilman Larry Schlesinger, another co-sponsor, said they don’t expect it to return anytime soon.

Even the intent to bring it up drew a strong reaction from opponents. Councilman Charles Jones, one of six council members to oppose the previous ordinance, said he thought abrogating the council’s usual procedure was unfair.
“I think that you have really misled the citizens of Macon by asking to put this on tonight,” he told White in the pre-council meeting.
But Council President James Timley, though he also opposed the earlier ordinance, said the mechanism to change procedure was legitimate.
“There is a maneuver, and that’s legal. That’s in our rules,” Timley said.
The ordinance would have banned smoking inside all bars and restaurants, near business entrances, and near public playgrounds or park seating areas. But unlike the earlier version, it would allow smoking in other parts of outdoor parks and would not have gone into effect unless Bibb County passed a matching ordinance.
Reichert’s veto in May called for some amendments, including collaboration with the county. Had the ordinance made it through the council Tuesday, he likely would have signed it. Just before the meeting, Reichert described the current version as “acceptable.”

Before it was clear that the smoking ordinance would not come up for a final vote, about 40 people waited in council chambers and half a dozen lined up to speak against it. The crowd applauded when Timley announced it wouldn’t be brought to a vote Tuesday night.
The chamber then nearly emptied, and the drama left as well: Councilmen Mike Cranford, Lonnie Miley and Virgil Watkins also filed out before the rest of the meeting was over.
In other business, the council approved all other items up for a vote. Among those was approval of a 75-cent charge on all purchases of prepaid cell phone minutes to fund the local 911 call center. That’s a new tax which the state will collect anyway, starting Jan. 1.
The only way any of that money can remain in the city is through a council resolution to use it for 911 funding.
Council members also voted to accept a $199,656 AmeriCorps grant for the third year of funding a police cadet recruitment program, and ratified the purchase of E-911 equipment for $995,824. The latter purchase already was budgeted, but the revised deal with Motorola will give the city four microwave dishes instead of three, and nine work consoles instead of eight, for the same price, according to city Information Technology Director Stephen Masteller.