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Posted on 12/19/2002 11:45:50 AM PST by Hell to pay

Ban opponents on recall warpath
By JAMES AMOS
The Pueblo Chieftain

Some sported "Put Their Butts Out!" buttons and T-shirts featuring the photographs of four City Council members who voted for the city's new smoking ban.

Others handed out bumper stickers saying "Fix Potholes, Not People!" and "The Sloppers Are Probably More Unhealthy Than Cigarettes, Vote No On Smoking Ordinance!"

Meeting at Peppers Niteclub on Wednesday, an estimated 400-500 people organized their push to overturn the city's new smoking ban and recall the four City Council members who voted for it.

The ban, passed by council Dec. 9, would outlaw smoking in almost any enclosed place open to the public or to which the public is invited. It would apply to bars, restaurants, bingo halls, bowling alleys and stores as well as prohibit smoking outside a building within 20 feet of the door.

The ban goes into effect Jan. 1 unless the group, "Puebloan's For Common Sense In Government", can gather enough petition signatures to stop it.

The group will start gathering signatures for several issues:

- a referendum suspending the smoking ban and forcing a ballot question asking voters if they want the city's old smoking ordinance instead.

- a recall of council President Mike Occhiato and members Bill Sova, Bob Schilling and Ted Lopez Jr..

The referendum petitions could be available as soon as this morning, attorney Joe Losavio told the crowd, which included many bar and restaurant owners. The city has to approve the petition forms.

Doug Carlson takes a puff from his cigarette while he and Irish Pub owner, Ted Calentino, listen during a meeting of people against the city's new no-smoking ordinance held at Peppers Niteclub Wednesday. Carlson and Calentino are members of organizational committees assembled to fight the ordinance.

The recall petitions may be available by Friday, he said.

The group has 30 days from the day the ordinance was approved to force the ballot question on the issue, Losavio said. Puebloan's For Common Sense wants to gather more than the 3,300 signatures needed by the end of the year in order to prevent the ordinance from taking effect at all.

Losavio and attorneys Jim and Joe Koncilja are donating their legal services to the effort.

"This is dictating rather than governing," Losavio said of the ban.

He said Pueblo residents were "blindsided" by the ordinance, which was introduced in a less strict form in October and then changed at the Dec. 9 meeting to include all bars.

Losavio said people would rather that the city spend tax money on anything other than enforcing the ban.

Joe Koncilja said the ban was "without a doubt the dumbest move I've ever seen" and could just lead the city to ban other dangerous things.

"Alcohol is more dangerous than cigarettes, so why not just close you down altogether?" he told the bar owners in the crowd.

The irony is that people will drive to county bars to drink and smoke, said Koncilja, who noted that he specializes in clients with drunk-driving charges.

"Then you'll have a longer road and maybe you'll kill someone on the way back," he said.

The group also plans to ask bar owners not to serve "the Fascist Four" council members, as Losavio called them, and for people to boycott their businesses.

"We're going to make this the most colorful, most interesting campaign there is," said one of the group's co-chairman, Don Gray, owner of Gray's Coors Tavern.

"It's important that we really make this thing a rights issue, not a smoking issue," Gray said of the group's campaign strategy.

"You are all freedom fighters," he said.

Bar and restaurant operators fear the ban will cost them business. But they were not the only people supporting the referendum and recalls.

Sharon Radacy, who gathered people's names at the door, said only about half the crowd were bar or restaurants proprietors.

She herself isn't one either, she said. She sells insurance, much of it to bars and restaurants, so "it's a trickle-down effect," she said.

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