Both sides!
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.
That's wonderful news. However, when a City Council makes businesses go smoke free, and the business doesn't comply, they start giving out fines. The anti's will force a business to go smoke free one way or the other. See what I mean? That's why this has to be faught.
Here in MO there was a proposed tax increase of 55 cents a pack on cigarettes. VOTERS rejected that tax increase.
That's great, Judith Anne! Usually, smokers lose in polls and votes because 25-30% of the state smokes, and since we are in the minority, we lose every time, unless the non-smokers actually see what is going on, and then they vote for our side. The general public has no idea of the loss of freedoms with this. No smoking bans just open the door for futher bans on something else. I wish the people would listen to us.
Judith Anne, you are absolutely right--in theory. In practice, however, when the antis outspend anyone else 50-1 in an indoctrination campaign to terrify the gullible public into voting away the right to private property and individual liberties, it's even worse. At least there's a chance to recall or vote out of office the elitist jackasses who approve such bans; tyranny by the majority is harder to address. In any event, this is not the America I grew up believing in--I wonder now if it ever was.
Group files petitions to recall 3 on council
By JAMES AMOS
The Pueblo Chieftain
Opponents of the suspended smoking ban turned in almost 13,000 petition signatures Friday seeking to force the recall of three city council members.
Members of Puebloans for Common Sense in Government submitted petitions containing:
- 5,002 signatures for Mike Occhiato. The minimum number needed was 3,697.
- 1,576 for Ted Lopez Jr.. The minimum was 1,107.
- 1,233 for Bob Schilling. The minimum was 1,045.
City Clerk Gina Dutcher has 10 days to certify the petitions, which involves checking that all the circulators and the people who signed the petition were registered voters and live in the correct area for the petition they signed.
On Wednesday, the group turned in recall petitions with 5,086 signatures targeting City Council President Bill Sova. The minimum needed to force a recall election of Sova was 3,697.
A special recall election is expected to cost the city about $50,000, according to Dutcher. City Council must schedule it within 30 to 40 days of when the petitions are certified.
If a special recall election is needed, it probably will include a ballot question about the smoking ban, city officials said.
The clerk's staff was already in the process of checking the Sova signatures Friday. Dutcher said she and her staff will work though this weekend and evenings next week to get all the petitions certified.
The clerk also will hire two people to help the effort, she said.
Attorneys for the Common Sense group said the four targeted council members should resign because of all the signatures.
"They shouldn't even subject the voters to a recall election," said Joe Losavio, a local attorney helping the Common Sense group.
The Common Sense group formed shortly after the four council members voted to approve a controversial smoking ban in December.
The ordinance outlawed smoking in bars, restaurants and almost all other public areas. It also guaranteed workers the right to smoke-free workplaces.
Bar owners have provided much of the group's backbone, complaining that the smoking ban would ruin their businesses. They helped organize the recall petitions and gather the 10,000 signatures submitted in January to suspend the smoking ban and force its reconsideration.
Losavio and Jim Koncilja, another lawyer helping Common Sense, insisted the recall is not just about smoking.
"That's the lightning rod that set it all off," Koncilja said. "It's galvanized a lot of public opinion. But it's really about a lack of leadership." Koncilja said Common Sense members are unhappy with the council's handling of the animal shelter and growth in Pueblo. He also said some people who signed the recall petitions said they didn't like the idea of a proposed private prison being located west of Pueblo Boulevard.
The behavior of council members on television during their Monday meetings also has made getting the signatures easier, the Common Sense lawyers said.
"Their decorum is deplorable," Koncilja said. "It's embarrassing to the city."
Gathering signatures for the recall petitions wasn't very hard, they said. Many people were eager to sign and voice some unhappiness with City Council.
"We have not had any resistance when we've walked door to door," Koncilja said. "No one has told us 'Get off the porch. They've been good elected officials.' "
The Common Sense group won't field any candidates for the four council positions. Municipal elections are supposed to be nonpartisan.
Losavio and Koncilja said the group will support candidates that it likes, and that some potential candidates have already indicated their interest.
"Some of the names we're hearing, if they do come out (and run), would be very good candidates," Losavio said.
The group had to gather more than 2,000 more signatures for the four recall drives after city officials said last week that the original minimum figures were wrong. Common Sense members said the increase was made just to sink the recalls and they worked even harder to get enough signatures.
"This has been a moving target," Koncilja said.
Petition circulators were allowed to register people to vote at the same time they were soliciting signatures for the recalls. Losavio said that allowed the group to register 300-400 people to vote.
One reason for signatures to be thrown off the petitions is if clerk's office workers can't read them, Dutcher said. Her staff have used the person's address to look up their name if the signature itself was illegible, she said. But that hasn't always worked.
"We're doing everything we can," she said.
Some signatures also have been dropped because the handwriting matched that of other signatures and if a person signed the petition twice.
Pueblo City Councilmen say they won't resign
The four city council members targeted for recall say they have no intention of resigning their seats.
Joe Losavio, an attorney for the group seeking to recall Bill Sova, Mike Occhiato, Bob Schilling and Ted Lopez Jr., said Friday the four councilmen should resign and save voters an election.
But the four councilmen, who all voted for a controversial smoking ban in December, said they aren't stepping down.
"No," Schilling said simply.
"Why should I? It's the voters' decision, not Losavio's," Occhiato said.
"Absolutely not," said Sova. "I think he (Losavio) is a fool to think that, especially when the pretense under which they got the signatures was really questionable."
Sova was referring to reports that circulators of the recall petitions told people the petitions were to fight the now-suspended smoking ban.
Sova said he looks forward to the recall election because it will settle both the recall and the smoking ban question sooner.
"Why wait 'til November to be healthy?" he said. "Why not start in April?"
Lopez, who is up for re-election in November, will now have two elections this year. He said a recall is the right of the citizens, but that he didn't agree with the reason for this one.
"The larger community will demonstrate the larger common sense," he said, "and it may be different than what this Common Sense group has."
The Councilmen are the problem, not the people.
Petitions counted: only Sova, Occhiato face recall
elections By JAMES AMOS
The Pueblo Chieftain
Enough valid signatures have been collected by opponents of the city's suspended smoking ban to force a recall election for two city council members, but it may not matter.
City Clerk Gina Dutcher announced Monday that her office finished checking signatures on recall petitions filed against Bill Sova, Mike Occhiato, Ted Lopez Jr. and Bob Schilling.
The petitions targeting Sova and Occhiato had enough signatures, almost 3,700 each, to force a recall election against the two councilmen if they don't resign from council in five days, Dutcher said.
The petitions targeting Schilling and Lopez were 87 and 12 signatures short, respectively, according to Dutcher.
The recall election may rest with council at its next meeting Monday when it debates a proposed compromise to the smoking ban, which was suspended in January. If council OKs the compromise, the recall election won't take place.
Neither attorneys for smoking ban opponents, Puebloans for Common Sense in Government, nor City Attorney Tom Jagger would release details of the compromise.
But officials for Common Sense said Monday that if council were to repeal the ban and pass a compromise that allows smoking in some public areas - especially bars - they would halt the recall efforts.
That appeared more possible Monday after Occhiato said that he just wants to drop the ban, which outlaws smoking in almost all businesses and places open to the public, including bars.
"The compromise ordinance is essentially not that different than what we have now (that the ban is suspended)," Occhiato said. "We've had enough division and brain damage on this in the community. Why not just drop the whole thing?"
Occhiato said he changed his stance because "it was just a lot of pressure from (Chieftain Publisher) Bob Rawlings, the chamber group and a lot of people in the community.
"It's an issue that really divided the community, it divided the council. We need to just state that both sides overreacted and just drop it," Occhiato said.
If council does not approve the compromise, Common Sense will pursue the recall and sue to have Schilling and Lopez included in it, according to one of the group's lawyers, Joe Losavio.
City officials increased the number of signatures needed to prompt a recall against each of the four council members just days before the first set of recall petitions was due. Losavio said the city wrongly interpreted state law to increase the numbers.
If a compromise isn't passed, the city must schedule the recall election within 30-40 days.
Dutcher said the special election could cost the city $60,000 to $70,000. Her office already has spent more than $1,500 on overtime and for part-time employees to check petitions signatures, she said.
The business owners really need to grow a set, and stand up for themselves. The City Council RULERS need to GO!
That's funny. BOTH sides? The city council acted like nazis and the citizens gave it to them with both barrels.
;-D This is just a small part of the backlash that is developing...;-D
Makes ME wonder how much they are getting "under the table." There has to be SOMETHING in it for them to fight this hard. Don't you agree?
Both sides!
"Brain damage?" What the heck is that supposed to mean?
Boy, this guy can't back pedal fast enough, huh?
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