Supervisors Lean to Smoking Ordinance : Failure of County Chamber of Commerce to Develop Regulatory Plan Stirs Reaction

The Board of Supervisors moved closer than ever Friday to favoring mandatory anti-smoking rules for private workplaces after the Orange County Chamber of Commerce declared it will not develop a plan for self-regulation by employers.

Only last week the supervisors delayed adoption of a strict, mandatory anti-smoking ordinance for private workplaces in county territory based on Chamber of Commerce chairman Robert J. Waller’s assurances that his organization was willing to deliver a plan for self-regulation within 90 days.

In a letter dated and hand-delivered to the Board of Supervisors on Friday, chamber president Lucien D. Truhill stated that his organization “cannot accept the responsibility of developing an overall self-regulatory plan affecting smoking in the private workplace and disavows any administrative or monitoring responsibility.” The chamber prefers the role of “communicator to the businesses” through various newsletters, according to Truhill’s letter.

“That’s kind of goldbricking,” said Supervisor Harriett Wieder, who cast the deciding vote last week in the Board’s 3-2 decision to delay mandatory rules. “As far as I’m concerned it reflects a lack of leadership . . . I don’t know what the board will do, but I’m very disappointed. We were not asking them to enforce . . . . We were asking them to develop an overall plan,” Wieder said.

” . . . Bob Waller did not stay for the whole meeting last week . . . . There was nobody left to answer questions we wanted to ask.”

In an interview Friday, Truhill said the chamber never believed it was supposed to develop a specific plan.

“If the misunderstanding was there,” he said, it was because “the county apparently called on us . . . after our chairman left (last week’s supervisors’ meeting), to come up with an overall plan.”

Tape Recording Different

But Waller had specifically offered to return to the board with a work plan in his comments last week, according to a tape recording of his testimony. In fact, when questioned about how long it would take for the chamber to complete the work, Waller had responded, “Not long at all” and suggested it might be done within a month.

Truhill declined to describe in detail the discussions behind Thursday’s vote by chamber directors to reject the project but said much of the opposition came from individual, independent-minded chambers from the county’s 26 cities. The county chamber is the parent organization for all local groups.

“We were a little shocked that they (county supervisors) had included us in a leadership role with the city chambers,” Truhill said. “The city chambers are independent and they never wanted us in a leadership role.”

Truhill claimed that the chamber’s willingness to work as a “clearinghouse” for employers seeking information about smoking plans, and for educational programs, was not far removed from what county supervisors were seeking.

He quoted one chamber director as saying it would be impossible to come up with one overall plan. He said the director had two different smoking plans, one for each of his manufacturing plants.

Supervisor Bruce Nestande favored mandatory rules until last week, when Waller offered the chamber’s services in developing a plan for self-regulation. Following last week’s board vote favoring the chamber’s approach, Nestande said failure of the chamber’s efforts would ensure adoption of mandatory regulations. And he wrote Waller:

“As you know, the Board of Supervisors was precariously close to adopting an ordinance which would have represented further intrusion of government into business and carried the threat of $100 per day fines for failure to comply. The positive nature of your response has allowed the private sector a chance to control its own destiny . . . . If you can pull together all the chambers into a comprehensive approach to self-regulation of smoking in the workplace, it will be far superior to 27 different approaches adopted by the various city and county jurisdictions.”

Puzzled at Development

Waller and Nestande were unavailable Friday.

Meanwhile, the two county supervisors who favored mandatory controls in the private workplace last week were puzzled by Friday’s development.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen . . . . There is concern about what we thought they (chamber officials) had committed themselves to do,” said Board Chairman Thomas F. Riley. “Although I was still opposed (to a voluntary approach), I was willing to cooperate as far as possible.”

“Sure, I favored a strong smoking ordinance and still do,” said Supervisor Ralph Clark. “But I felt that the plan outlined at the meeting was worth a try, especially with the chamber’s involvement. Now? Well, I guess it’s back to the drawing board . . . . If this was a football game, it would be time to punt.”