PARKERSBURG - Wood County commissioners learned Monday they don't have authority to grant exemptions from the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department's smoking ban.
The second phase of the department's six-county indoor air regulation, effective Wednesday, requires all restaurants, bars and video rooms to be 100 percent smokefree. The initial phase of the regulation gave those establishments three years to become smoke-free. It allowed smoking in bars and video lottery rooms for that three-year period and permitted restaurants to build enclosed smoking rooms with separate ventilation systems. The only exemptions to the ban, listed in the ordinance are nonprofit bingo halls (in business as a designated bingo hall) designated rooms in a hotel, if the hotel chooses to do so, meeting facilities in hotels and fraternal organizations that allow smoking and no children are allowed in those locations, and retail tobacco stores, which don't have a food permit.
Last week, representatives of area veterans' clubs asked the commission to consider exempting those establishments from the smoke ban. Unsure of their legal standing, the commissioners asked special counsel Blaine Myers to research the issue.
"The authority of the Board of Health to implement such regulations is set forth in the code. This specific authority of boards of health to implement regulations to restrict smoking in enclosed public places has been upheld by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in (the case of) Foundation for Independent Living Inc. and others vs. the Cabell-Huntington Board of Health and others (2003). Based on the foregoing, the county commission does not have authority to grant waivers or exemptions from board of health regulations," Myers told commissioners in a written legal opinion turned over to county officials Monday.
"We're apparently out of it then," commission President Bob Tebay commented after reading the legal opinion. Commissioner Rick Modesitt declined to comment. Commissioner Blair Couch did not attend Monday's meeting. The commissioners had scheduled a meeting with the veterans' representatives for Thursday.
Neither Bert Young or Ron Conner, who met with commissioners last week could be reached Monday afternoon for comment. Young and Conner told the commissioners earlier the veterans' organizations are private groups, and they are concerned the smoking ban will negatively affect business in the veterans' clubs in the area.
Contacted Monday afternoon by The Parkersburg News and Sentinel, Tim Miller, environmental health director, said he wasn't surprised by the news.
"I anticipated that. I didn't feel the county commission had any legal standing to change anything our board of health has done, and I think the commissioners thought that was the case as well. I haven't heard anything further from the veterans' organizations. They did what they were allowed to do, speak to the board of health. And the board subsequently denied the exemption request. It's my job to do what the board asks me to do, enforce the rules they make and that's what I'll do," Miller said.
No other requests for exemption have been forthcoming, Miller said. "We've had complaints about it (the smoke ban), but there are also a lot of people who are very happy about it," he said.
