Smoking ban in Kenosha is dead

Rumor has it that the smoking ban in Kenosha is now officially dead. 11 out of 17 city districts voted against it on Tuesday.

It has turned into a real embarrassment for many of Kenosha's alderman who originally supported the ban and even went so far as to sponsor this extreme legislation.

9 of 17 aldermen, a majority, had signed on as sponsors. This assured the passage of the ban even before the legislation was introduced. This legislation was three weeks away from guaranteed passage.

Then Tuesday, many of the same sponsors to this legislation actually voted against the ban.

I heard though the rumor mill that aldermen were pulling their names off of the bill as sponsors and as of today, there are no more sponsors to this legislation. It is dead.

As you know, I was one of the aldermen that was against the smoking ban from the get go. I could not be more happy that I was one of three aldermen that actually deferred this piece of legislation to keep it from getting rammed though before anyone in the community had the opportunity to speak on the issue. Thank goodness!

I would hate to see the city government actually get tarnished for this when so many people were against a smoking ban.

The secretiveness of this was beyond the pale. If this had made it out of committee back in August, the smoking ban would already be in place and all of the taverns in Kenosha would be struggling even more with a downturn in the economy.

We will see in tomorrow's paper if every sponsor has pulled out.

Either way, congrats to all of the citizens of Kenosha and the tavern owners who rose up in defiance of their city government and told them NO! You worked so hard to kill this and you won.

I am a firm believer that government on any level needs to stay out of the private business of their citizens.

Edited to add: True enough, all of the sponsors have pulled out of the ordinance, per the Kenosha News.

Here is a link to the original ordinance