Issue date: 4/3/08 Section: News

"The county might consider (a smoking ban), but in the end you have cities that the county has no jurisdiction over," Smith said. "It won't accomplish what they're trying to accomplish because the towns themselves have to ratify anything that dramatic that the County Board passes."

A countywide proposal would become complicated, Smith said, because people wouldn't know where they can and can't smoke throughout the county.

"I'm concerned that when you create this sort of battle between smokers and nonsmokers you're going to make it even more difficult when we get to Madison again," Smith said, referring to the next session of the state legislature, "because you're adding more ammunition to the fire. I'd rather the county pass a resolution demanding a statewide ban."

Smith added it would be "far more useful than causing more of a patchwork problem than we already have."

Smith said the Tavern League of Wisconsin played a large part in fighting the statewide ban as well as citywide bans, but only made the situation worse by creating smoking islands of cities around the state.

"They wanted to block the statewide ban and now it's far worse than that," he said. "We need to pass it (at the state level) and get beyond it for the betterment of businesses and health of everyone. There's a lot of important legislation not getting the attention it deserves because we're spending time on this controversial issue."

Willett said he wants to put pressure on the state to make the ban uniform by passing the first countywide ban in Wisconsin.

"It should be done by the state … it'll come up again next fall but I feel we have to keep the pressure on," he said. "It may come up and get turned down again but that doesn't stop us from taking action."

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