Read:  Diary Of A Disaster Page 1

June 6, 2005
The stories about the financial damage caused by the smoking ban continue. The bar owners are reporting record lows, the customers who held on for a while to support us are long gone. New non-smoking customers are not showing up in droves to spend their money, in fact they don't show up at all. They were not our customers to begin with.  Staff moral is at all time lows, many have left because they were laid off or had hours significantly cut which has now impacted their livelihoods. Those who still have a job are working double the hours to make the same amount of money they used to make with less hours.
 
The frustration reached a new high as we started the 3rd month. Organized by a VFW club whose business losses are down approximately 30 percent with gambling losses down 46%. About 60 bar owners and some of our staff decided to attend the Bloomington City Council meeting. We were not on the agenda but we could speak at the open forum, and speak we did!!!! Frustrated, angry and desperate we told our stories.
 
The council gave 4 owners five minutes each. The rest waited until after the usual business was taken care of. For over 2 hours we spoke. The stories were, as usual, heartbreaking. The end result was a 7-0 vote to look at the economic impact of the smoking ban at the August 16 meeting. There are two council members who believe no matter how badly our businesses are damaged the ban was passed for the right reason.
 
Ironically, just this week I received a letter from someone saying they had visited the Mall of America and the owner of a large piano bar they visited told them business was down 50% since the smoking ban. The Bloomington City Council felt they could do what ever they wanted because they had the Mall to fall back on financially. The MOA has 11 liquor licenses, the Comedy Club has already closed and Tuesday's closes at the end of the month. Will the piano bar be far behind?
 
Especially powerful was a list the VFW read of all the organizations they donate their charitable gambling revenues to. These organizations have now received letters explaining that the ban has cost significant revenue losses and they will not be receiving contributions similar to last year, if at all. All thanks to the smoking ban.
 
We left their chambers at 1 AM. tired but happy to have a glimmer of hope, even if it is 6 weeks away.
 

June 7 2005
Flush with our small success before the Bloomington City Council we had about 75 bar owners and staff show up at the Hennepin County Commissioners meeting to speak at their open forum. While Bloomington is a community of about 85,000 residents, it is run like a large corporation it still has a small town feel. Hennepin County boasts they represent a quarter of the state's population and has a budget of $1.8 billion and considers themselves omnipotent and holds themselves accountable to no one.
 
These 7 commissioners include 2 who are firmly behind the bars. Two who are smoke haters like no others, of course one of them is an ex-MPAAT board member. That leaves 3 to work with, one of those 3 wants to be the mayor of Minneapolis.
 
Again, the list of heartbreaking stories were told by some of the biggest bars in the county. Some own bars in both Hennepin and Ramsey County (St. Paul and surrounding cities with a partial ban). Also included were damages to Kuether Distributing, our Budweiser distributor with accounts mostly in Hennepin County. They have eliminated one entire route and are down 16%. Carbonic Machines, who for 50 years has serviced our bars and restaurants,  is down 27%. Vending, food and other hospitality industry related businesses reported losses from 15-50%. Bands do not want to play our venues, they can't smoke and the customers are all gone anyway.
 
We also heard the stories about vandalism, noise, litter, and drug and alcohol use as smokers went outside to our sidewalks or parking lots. Bar owners are worried that it is only a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt or killed. One bar owner, down 65% compared to last year, had left a customer running her bar so she could come down and speak to the commissioners.
 
Especially frustrating was the second biggest smoke hater of all: Commissioner Gail Dorfman. Over and over she tried to discredit the bar owners and used all the other lies the smoke haters have perfected. Dorfman  ran her aid ragged locating newspaper stories contradicting the bar owners. One example includes Bryant Lake Bowl, like every other community, we had that one bar owner who thought the ban would be good for business, she spoke at every hearing about how many new customers she would gain by a ban. The first day of the ban the Mayor and 50 of his favorite smoke haters took a bus to her place and celebrated the "fresh air". She was quoted in the paper and on every news station how great the ban was. As time went on, reality check, she found business went down. She applied for (like 25 others) for an outdoor patio. She, like every other license holder, said she needed it because of damage from the smoking ban. Dorfman used quotes from those first days when Kim was still supporting the ban to try to diminish the damage.
 
That token bar owner in St. Paul who thought business was going to be so great with a smoking ban has now applied for a waiver for her 2 businesses. Business was so far down she has agreed to now sell more alcohol than food to meet the requirements for the partial ban in Ramsey County. In other words forced to become a bar, not a restaurant to survive. The biggest smoke hater in the state, Jeannie Wiggen, our ALA and MPAAT buddy, has now told her smoke hating crowd to boycott her restaurants, opps I mean bars now.
 
A St. Paul bar owner told his story too and thanked the commissioners for all his new customers. He said customers had laminated lists of the bars which allow smoking and the customers were visiting them all.
 
Hennepin County Commissioners took the easy way out and did nothing. A couple days later I received a calendar from one commissioner with all the dates of the open forums highlighted, encouraging until I realized it went through the end of the year. Many of the bar owners who spoke will not make it that long.
 

June 9
Meeting with the Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin who wants to be Minneapolis' new mayor, he also happens to be the commissioner for my district. Lets keep in mind our current mayor sold us out, his so called Task Force included 21 smoke haters and 2 business owners. RT  wears different color socks each day so he can "embrace diversity" every single day. One day he forgot to put his car in park and it got away from him, I think he stays on the LRT now. Sorry, I digress....After Peter voted for the ban and asked me to contribute to his mayoral campaign I sent him a note saying the only difference between him and RT was his socks matched. He hasn't spoken to me since.
 
We met at a south Minneapolis bar/restaurant whose business is down over 30%. Eight years and he could not pay his property taxes in May and can not get any additional financing. He said he won't last much longer. The three new customers he gained with the smoking ban have not begun to replace the lost ones. 
 
Since I was supposed to keep a low profile another bar owner started out with "Peter, no one knew the ban would be this bad...". Peter pointed to me and said, she did. Because we had just spoken to the commissioners this was a different type of meeting. Some bar owners talked about the damage but we were trying to get Peter's support should we get an amended option on the table. The end result was Peter committed to nothing. He wanted to see the poll numbers (of which 60% think the ban is wrong), and ordinances that have been repealed (Moorhead and Duluth by voter referendum) and Baltrami County (way up in northern Minnesota) which allows ashtrays out at 8 PM. Along with a few other things of interest I threw in, he will receive the information on Monday.
 
This $ucks folks, if you think it won't happen to you, your wrong. If you think a ban is good for business, your really wrong. If you think this is easy to overturn, your really really wrong.
 

June 10, 2005
I spoke before the Property Rights Coalition tonight. What a joy to not have to explain to a group of people that this battle is not about smoking.
 
Note of pride: My son had to give a persuasive speech for English class and the winner won a mythical million dollars. He spoke on the smoking ban, using facts and figures from smokersclubinc.com, he gave a fabulous speech. I was another of his "sources". We had a code word set up if I started to go on and on, he only had to use it once. We were great!
 
Guess who won? Yep, us!!!! That mythical million bucks...my son gave it to all the bars losing money. 
 

July 6, 2005
People who have been silent about the smoking bans, like Jenny Fortman, and Nanci Holler, are starting to speak out:
MN:  Smoking Ban Hurts Communities.

July 14, 2005
The battle continues. We have spent the last month meeting with council members from the city of Bloomington and commissioners from Hennepin County. The city of Minneapolis refuses to let us on the agenda even armed with staggering statistics of job and revenue losses. The mayor and the council might be too busy trying to prevent the racy Hooter's from coming into the city to notice that two more businesses, Copeland's and TGIF, have closed their doors downtown Minneapolis.
 
Bloomington has been receptive to the concerns of the bars and private clubs. They DID notice 2 businesses closed in the Mall of America. They noticed the Minnesota Department of Economic Security reported a loss of 1400 jobs in the hospitality sector for May and another 700 in June. (Wait until the minimum wage increase hits in August.) They also noticed their private clubs were down $250,000 the first three months of the ban. Money that will not be donated to worthy causes in their community. Liquor revenues continue to plummet in all size bars as the losses now total millions of dollars.
 
Hennepin County has been another battle. Of our 7 commissioners we have two, who day in and day, out continue to fight for our small businesses. Thank you to Mark Stenglein and Penny Steele. Randy Johnson, ex-MPAAT board member refuses to budge even though he admits the science is exaggerated. Peter McLaughlin (Minneapolis mayoral candidate) is concerned about the job losses, for good reason.
 
Our biggest smoke hater of all, Gail Dorfman finally acknowledged the losses are significant which we consider a huge success. She firmly believes they passed the ban for the "right reasons". Last time I checked we didn't elect her to be our mother. Commissioner Dorfman also continues to discredit the bar owners at every opportunity, continues to delay any progress we make to amend the ban and continues to insist the bar owners would lie if they "self reported" our numbers. She will readily accept any other groups self reported numbers from drug addicts to poor single mothers but all bar owners lie.
 
Linda Koblick, as reported in the Star Tribune, refused to participate in any 4th of July activities because the general public is "very angry at elected officials now". Yes Linda, we are.
 
Mike Opat is sick of hearing the bar owners whine. He said he did not want to have to listen to another 2 hours of smoking ban stories. Sorry Mike, you were elected to listen. You also stated you would bring back discussion on the ban if the state did not follow suit with a state wide ban. We are still waiting and patience is wearing thin.
 
The county has still done exactly nothing. The forum yesterday had 3 smoke haters testify. A "doctor" told the commissioners that Meeker County passed a ban but never bothered to mention the minor detail that the bars were exempted. A "waiter" testified how great it was working in a bar with no smoking. After a conversation with the owner of said bar, the guy doesn't even work there.
 
We have expected some action from the county for a month now. Nothing has happened. We plan to attend each and every commissioners meeting and whine away. Conversations with bar owners say they are not sure how long they can hang on. Some are wondering why bother.
 
In the meantime we have petitions for people to sign. We are waiting for our court date as the appeals for our lawsuits work their way slowly through the legal system. We continue to update commissioners and council members on the job and revenue losses. We continue to fight for media attention, which is few and far between. We continue to help other counties fight their own smoking bans by sharing our support and our numbers. We continue to try to stop the lies the smoke haters continue to spread.

 

August 4, 2005
As we enter the 4th month of the smoking ban we continue to see lost revenues, jobs and more closed businesses. Minneapolis Hospitality Association can document the city of Minneapolis is losing a million dollars a month in lost revenues compared to the year before. We can document 1200 lost jobs. Charitable gambling losses are down on average over $100,000 per month per establishment. More money that will not go back into the community.

We have proved that the smoke haters lied from the beginning. We have proved they continue to lie again and again. We continue to stress nonsmoking customers are not rushing through our doors. We need some relief from the excessive negative economic burden placed on our local businesses with this smoking ban.

Bar owners, staff and even customers are showing up at the Hennepin County Commissioners and Bloomington city council meetings trying to get them to change their minds. It is an uphill battle. 50 at the first meeting to 150 at the last meeting. For every person who attends we have another 150 who are with us in thoughts and prayers. The smoke haters get up and tell their usual lies and distortions. There are too many examples of these lies to list, but one smoke hater bragged about a new Meeker County ban just passed. He neglected to say they exempted every bar in the county.

I can not stress enough, if these bar owners would have been at the meetings before the smoking ban was passed, we wouldn't be in this situation. The commissioners and the council members do not want to look stupid, do not want to admit they made a mistake and do not want to have the smoke haters come after them again. They refuse to admit they fell for the smoke haters lies.

At these meetings we hear over and over the staggering damages the smoking ban has caused. We hear owner after owner say no one thought it would be this bad. (Even though we warned them) We continually remind the county that in spite of our ban, not one other county in the state followed suit and banned smoking in bars. We remind them the state refused to pass any smoking ban.

Our smoke haters are now telling us we should be lobbying for a state wide ban to "level the playing field." I remind them our county has been severely damaged by this smoking ban and why would we ever wish this on any other city or counties small businesses. 

The enormous failure of our local ban has been noticed by many around the state including elected officials. The general public is now supporting the bars too. The Star Tribune on line poll last week showed 64% oppose the total smoking ban as it is. No surprise the Tribune doesn't help the bars much, the smoke haters advertise too often in their newspaper. To the tune of $26,000 before the Minneapolis vote last summer.

We have received support from several commissioners who have publicly gone on various radio and television shows to support the bar owners. We thank them. As terrifying as it was, even I went on the radio. Several times with assorted hosts but once all by myself for two hours. (I think I finally stopped shaking 2 hours after the show was over.) The things we do for our cause!

On the radio show there is a computer screen telling the line number, who the caller is, where they are from and a brief description of what they want to say. At one point in time a caller called in to say now that we had a smoking ban he went out more often. On air I told Jason, my executive producer and awesome helper, that if any moron called in to tell me they went out more often because of the ban, that there just weren't enough of people like him. Line two immediately went dead.

The city of Minneapolis is proving most difficult of all. The mayor is running for reelection. His new communtications director is an ex-lobbyist for the American Cancer Society. This well funded special interest group now owns our current mayor.

Unfortunately, the deciding vote for the Hennepin County Commissioners is the wanna be mayor. The stakes are high and the details prove this to be politics at its messiest. We may be fighting this battle until the primary is over and some bar owners won't make it that long.

The Hennepin County Commissioners are locked at 3-3 with one undecided. When this whole mess started I met with one of the biggest smoke haters of the bunch and gave him Michael McFadden's book "Dissecting the Anti Smokers Brain." This commissioner is an ex-MPAAT board member, they are our folks who have all our tobacco money. After he voted in favor of the ban I asked him to send the book back or send me a check to cover the cost of it. One year later, I have never heard from him until today.
 
As we are debating an amended smoking ban several of the commissioners have begun meeting with the American Cancer Society again. When I heard  this smoke hater was meeting with them, I sent an e-mail requesting a meeting for the bar owners. (I had also pointed out at the last open forum meeting that some of the smoke hater commissioners had met 16 or 18 times with the smoke haters compared to 1 time with the bar owners. This is public information that we demanded from one smoke hater commissioner.)
 
TAAA DAAAA: The smoke hater above e-mailed me today agreeing to a meeting with the bar owners AND said: "if this debate continues...I will soon be quoting and citing from McFadden's book" AND he agreed to pay me for the book!
 
To anyone dealing with elected officials. GO ORDER THE BOOK!!!  I had to special order the book and it took a while but that was the best investment ever! I wish I would have read it long before I did. I still use if for reference. Save yourself a lot of time, spend the money, give it to your elected officials!!! This book is not just an effective weapon against the smoke haters...it is the BEST weapon against them. Thanks Michael!

August 13, 2005
Cities, counties and states are not very forthcoming with revenue and job losses due to a smoking ban. Bar owners will be waiting a year or more to obtain Minneapolis numbers. Hennepin County Commissioner Koblick' wants to "study" the issue for 2 or 3 years as the smoke haters use every delay tactic they can think of.

They can run, but they can't hide! The bar owners found an legitment organization willing to provide numbers to back up the bar owners claim that our businesses are badly damaged by the smoking ban. The Gambling Control Board, which does not take a position on the policy issue, provided these numbers. Timely, prompt and efficient, thank you very much! These numbers can not be grouped with other statistics that would mask or minimize losses as many other cities, counties and states do.

Bloomington, the first willing to look at the economic damages of the smoking ban, will see these numbers at the Monday night city council meeting. Individual bars have also provided detailed revenue statements. Remember the bar owners are discredited at every turn, in some cases called out right liars and surely can't be trusted to self report our numbers.  Ironic that many of the studies on SHS are based on self reported recall to exposure. Fifty bar owners can get up and describe lost revenues and jobs and one smoke hater will tell of a restaurant who loves the smoking ban.

The smoke haters in Hennepin County call this "dip" in business: temporary. A dip that Hennepin County and Minneapolis assured us would never happen, as the nonsmoking customers flocked to our businesses. If you assume this trend will continue, Hennepin County will lose an estimated $1,632,000 in annual tax revenues in just charitable gambling losses. The City of Minneapolis charitable gambling is down 24.26% totaling $1,894,585.99, in just two months.

The job losses continue to mount and the liquor revenues are devastating as well. Food sales appear to be flat. Twenty businesses have closed in Hennepin County since the beginning of the ban. In researching other communities in similar size who have chosen to trample on property and individual rights, we expect another 80 to go under if the ban continues.

Listed below are the gross receipts from lawful gambling for the months of April and May for 2004 and 2005. In other words, these losses represent the FIRST TWO MONTHS OF THE SMOKING BAN.

Read 'em and weep!

Ramsey County: Partial Ban
                    2004            2005            Lost Revenue     %
Grand Total 23,761,344.83 21,968,159.08 -1,793,185.75 -7.55%

Hennepin County: Total Ban
Grand Total 33,878,728.43 27,081,432.68 -6,797,295.75 -20.06%

Please pass these numbers along, the truth is badly damaging to our local businesses.

August 26, 2005
People having their own opinion has forced MPAAT to bring in more money to fight us!  How dare we have our own opinion?
MPAAT (our tobacco money) just announced the hiring of a new lobbyist firm to prevent us overturning our city and county ban to be spent in the next 4 months.
(Also see RWJF local ban grant information to the University of Minnesota.)

A lawsuit filed today sues the state of MN for the Health Impact Fee, a violation of the 1998 tobacco settlement they can not charge an additional fee for health care...imagine the impact this will bring.

MN:  Bar builds deck for smokers.   Sue Jeffers hopes to overcome slow business due to the smoking ban. 

MN:  Putting a face on impact of smoking bans.

September 17, 2005
We lost the Bloomington vote. 6-1. Bar owners, staff and customers told our stories. The usual smoke haters were their with their oxygen tanks and white lab coats. State and city numbers are slow in being released but we obtained the charitable gambling numbers for the different counties and showed Bloomington to be down 26.21% or $3,489,062.00. It gets worse every month and it is not even winter yet.
 
This money will not be donated to the schools, the shelters, the athletic teams, the city, the police and fire departments. One council member after reviewing the report said: Hmmm, gambling, drinking and smoking are down, sounds good to me. So are revenues and jobs that will have to be replaced, businesses will close and there will sit empty buildings.
 
Our hero and sole voice of reason on the Bloomington City Council, Vern Wilcox, asked that the council tell the business owners now if the ban would be amended so they could have a "quick death."
 
The following week every bar on the fourth floor in the Mall of America closed, except Hooter's who despite being down over 25%, wanted the visibility. The MOA is experiencing tremendous growth and has shown record high customer counts but these businesses decided it was just too tough of a nut to crack. All attributed the smoking ban as a deciding factor in closing. Another 200 jobs lost.
 
The meeting was hell. My heart was literally breaking for some of my new friends who may be closing their businesses and clubs or losing their jobs. The lost revenues, lost charitable gambling revenues, and lost jobs and businesses is heartbreaking. These good, hard working people who have invested their blood, sweat and tears into living the American Dream, up against arrogant, egotistical, gullible and ignorant politicians was really too much for me.
 
But there is some good news. We just had the primary. We will have a new city council in Bloomington come January. Some of our candidates won, some of the smoke haters will not be back. One was quoted in the Tribune as saying the smoking ban was part of her defeat. I cannot stress enough, yes, it was. Of course the Cancer Society was quick to say their candidate had won. Added with a huge chunk of our taxpayer change that MPAAT released to be spent before year end to "get their message out," we face a battle but it is a battle we can and will win.
 
 ************
 
The battle continues....the losses are too staggering to continue to document. I cannot keep up. Every day we hear another business is closing, more jobs are lost, some have lost homes, valuable collections sold (see Pioneer Press) and hope.
 
Friday is another fundraiser for a bar who can no longer pay their bills. Porter's Bar, in business for 70 years is ready to close. Kathy and John are two of the finest people I have ever met, caring, hard working, honest and they have been put out of business by yet another regulation to our industry as our elected officials try to legislate "healthy" behavior while ignoring facts, science, and negative economic impacts.
 
The bar owners attend every county commissioners meeting, we compare horror stories. Our elected officials acknowledge we are losing money and jobs, they acknowledge some businesses are closing but refuse to amend the ban, it is still a 3-3 tie, with one on the fence. The fact remains 23 businesses have closed that I know of... there could be and are more, over a thousand jobs have been lost and millions in lost revenues have been documented.
 
Our elected officials continue to minimize our staggering losses. They continue to believe bar owners and our staff are liars, easy to do when our numbers (according to them) are not good enough and the state cannot provide them in a timely manner. Elected officials refuse to admit they made a mistake. Just the fact they will only agree to amend the ban if we support a state wide ban tells me we have won. We will always win with the medical information and the US Constitution and now we are proving we can win with the mounting economic losses.
 
I am now encouraging businesses facing a smoking ban not to challenge it legally, spend your money advertising, just like the smoke haters do. They have millions, use your money wisely. Minneapolis bar owners have wasted thousands of dollars on lawyers who only want the press. Judges who won't look at the facts as we lose lawsuit after lawsuit, or the cases sit waiting to be heard. There are very few lawyers who can handle this battle and they are few and far between. We don't have one of those lawyers in Minneapolis.
 
Bar owners have a two part documentary running on cable TV to put a face on the damages, we have a cable Libertarian show from CA running and the potential of another big documentary being filmed in the near future. We have a rally planned for next week between our City Hall and our Government Center buildings. Invest in advertising, the press will help.
 
The primary election in Minneapolis did not give us the results we hoped for but we are still looking good, we will have a new council in January, many of the smoke haters will be gone, thank God. A County Commissioner running for mayor is behind by 9% after a very low voter turn out. Our incumbent mayor has hired an ex-lobbyist for the American Cancer Society to be his new communications director. No one seems to notice the irony here except me, of course the press is silent. I love the internet!!
 
The hospitality industry could have provided the commissioner with a win if he had the balls to vote to amend the county ban but to give credit where credit is due, the bar owners failed to provide him with the data he needed to vote to amend the ban. We dropped the ball and a scared politician is not going to help anyone, why should they? 
 
We have also succeeded in getting people with common sense and able to read a balance sheet to run for office. We have 10 new candidates in the next general election. Our message is getting out...wish us luck.
 
 

Minneapolis -September 19, 2005- Owners and employees working within the hospitality industry will be demonstrating the negative impacts that the
smoking ban ordinance has had on the their businesses and personal lives.  Representative for all areas of the industry will be attending, including
vendors.

On Thursday, September 22, 2005, at 3:00 PM. The Greater Metropolitan
Restaurant, Bar and Club owners and their employees and members will be
holding a rally.  It will be held on the North side of the Hennepin Government Center.

Sue Jeffers
Stub and Herb's
612-384-4374
Minnesotans Against Smoking Bans