LIHU‘E — A bill banning tobacco products in county parks, introduced 21⁄2 months ago by Kaua‘i County Councilman Dickie Chang, at first appeared to be a slam dunk. But after bouncing back and forth between the council’s Parks and Recreation
LIHU‘E — A bill banning tobacco products in county parks, introduced 21⁄2 months ago by Kaua‘i County Councilman Dickie Chang, at first appeared to be a slam dunk.
But after bouncing back and forth between the council’s Parks and Recreation Committee and the full council, the bill died Wednesday and was replaced by a resolution which has no enforcement authority.
“I always, from the get-go, supported a total (tobacco) ban; that for me was the way to go,” Chang said. “The (total) ban would have been something enforceable.”
He said that when the bill had reached full council several weeks ago for a final decision, he felt that at least five council members would have voted for it. But the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Hawai‘i dropped support for the bill because an amendment allowed smoking in the parks’ parking lots, and the full council sent the bill back to the Parks and Recreation Committee for additional work.
“The coalition wanted an all-or-nothing decision,” Chang said.
After the bill was sent back to the committee, Chang said he visited several county parks around the island, and decided the bill’s current version would create many problems related to enforceability, fire hazards and efficiency in protecting others from secondhand smoking.
“I want to make it perfectly clear here: I’m not flip-flopping, I’m not changing anything around,” he said. “I stood by a total ban from the get-go. But now, after hearing testimony from the committee, I believe that I did my due diligence to move around this island to see that there may be more problems.”
At this point, he said, a win-win situation would be a resolution and to progressively move forward with education.
“We all know the health hazards (of smoking and secondhand smoking) at this point right now,” said Chang, adding he believes the amendment to the original bill he “thoughtfully proposed” made it a “totally different” bill.
When Bill 2437 was introduced at first reading on May 23, Valerie Saiki, Kaua‘i’s coordinator at the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Hawai‘i, testified for the first time at the council chambers, providing somber statistics on smoking and secondhand smoking.
As the bill went through public hearing and the Parks and Recreation Committee, tobacco users got wind of the proposal and pressured the five committee members. Is an attempt to compromise, the committee amended the bill to designate the parking lots of county parks as smoking areas. On July 5, committee members JoAnn Yukimura, Tim Bynum and Nadine Nakamura voted for the bill, while committee members Mel Rapozo and KipuKai Kuali‘i opposed it.
When the bill reached full council on July 11 for second and final reading, even with Rapozo and Kuali‘i sticking to their original position, the council seemed poised to approved it. At full council, Chang and Council Chair Jay Furfaro would add their votes to the bill.
But the amended bill just wasn’t good enough for the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Hawai‘i, which wanted a full tobacco ban. Rather than working on amendments, the full council sent the bill back to the Parks and Recreation Committee.
On Aug. 1, the committee once again approved the bill. But the bill no longer banned tobacco from county parks. Bill 2437 became an anti-smoking bill, as Kaua‘i Police Department Chief Darryl Perry had previously testified that the state had no equipment that could tell if a substance was actually tobacco. And just like in the bill’s first round at committee level, Rapozo and Kuali‘i again opposed the bill.
Dying support
On Wednesday, the bill was once again at full council, ready for its second and final reading. But the bill’s support among council members wasn’t the same anymore. Also on Wednesday, Chang, who had worked on the bill for an entire year before introducing it, co-introduced with Kuali‘i Resolution 2012-51, a policy statement without enforcement authority.
The council worked on the resolution before taking up the bill. But Nakamura pointed out the resolution was asking the state government to pass legislation banning smoking at state beaches, while the county had no such policy yet for its own beaches and parks.
Bynum asked Furfaro to take up the bill first and then work on the resolution, which Furfaro reluctantly did. In a roll call vote, Furfaro, Rapozo and Kuali‘i opposed changing the order of events and lost to the majority’s will to take up the resolution last.
With the bill on the table, Chang explained why he wouldn’t support the bill anymore. Later, he said he would have voted for the bill had it still kept its original language banning tobacco use at county parks, and without designating areas for smokers and other tobacco users.
Nakamura also pointed to some problems still present in the bill’s final version, such as a difficulty for police officers to enforce a law that would penalize smokers lighting up cigarettes 20 feet downwind from other park users.
But just when it appeared Nakamura would oppose the bill, she said she would still support it — but she would like the “downwind” factor to be taken out of the bill, and allow smoking in parking lots without distance measurements.
Yukimura asked Furfaro permission to introduce an amendment addressing Nakamura’s concern. Furfaro said he would allow the amendment — despite verbalizing frustration on several amendments being added to the bill after it had left the committee twice — but that he would not support the bill anymore, regardless of any amendments.
Furfaro seemed irritated that the Coalition for Tobacco Free Hawai‘i would not support the amended bill on July 11, and now Saiki was saying the coalition would agree on a compromise.
Furfaro had said weeks ago that he would be willing to support a resolution. Now, with a resolution as a real option in front of him, Furfaro’s support for the bill wasn’t there anymore. He said the council needs a strategy to slowly push smoking out of county parks, and a resolution without enforcement components would be better to educate people on the dangers of smoking before passing a smoking ban.
Chang also said he would not change his new position regarding the bill’s final version.
Seeing that positions would not change, Yukimura then gave up introducing a last-minute amendment. With only her, Bynum and Nakamura supporting the bill, the measure failed.
Immediately after the smoking ban bill failed, the council took up the resolution and approved it by a 5-2 vote.
Bynum, who had championed the full tobacco ban from the beginning as a safety measure, criticized Kuali‘i for co-introducing the resolution. He said it’s ironic Kuali‘i would co-introduce a policy statement asking the state Legislature to pass a law banning smoking at all public beaches, while at the council, Kuali‘i would strongly oppose banning smoking at county parks.
Kuali‘i’s defense was that the resolution was about public awareness and “of course” will have a meaningful outcome.
“We just have to move forward and focus on the education, and focus on the public awareness, and focus on the belief of people doing the right thing,” Kuali‘i said. “Our citizens are good. Common courtesy, I would bet is 99.99 percent. The problems people are saying exist, are minimum to none.”
Bynum and Yukimura voted against the resolution because an amendment took out from the original document a request to the state to adopt a law prohibiting smoking at all public beaches. To both of them, the resolution became meaningless after the amendment.
