State Ballot Drive Targets Local No-Smoking Laws : Initiative: Measure supported by Philip Morris and some restaurant owners would invalidate bans in Orange County, city of Los Angeles and other places.

Philip Morris U.S.A., the nation’s largest cigarette manufacturer, and some Los Angeles area restaurants plan to sponsor a November ballot initiative that would abolish local anti-smoking ordinances in California, The Times learned Monday.

The initiative, called the California Uniform Tobacco Control Act, would place the responsibility for regulating smoking in the hands of the Legislature, and invalidate smoking bans in Los Angeles, Orange County and more than 100 other cities and counties.

The tobacco industry long has sought a statewide smoking standard, ending the authority of cities and counties to regulate smoking.

Lee Stitzenberger of the Dolphin Group, a Los Angeles political consulting firm, said his firm had been hired to qualify the measure for the ballot and he expects to have a $1-million budget.

“I have every indication that Philip Morris will be a player,” Stitzenberger said.

The proposed initiative is similar to legislation supported by the tobacco industry and carried last year by Assemblyman Curtis Tucker (D-Inglewood). That bill, which stalled in the state Senate, also sought to preempt local government from regulating smoking and impose statewide regulations looser than those adopted by many localities.

Opponents of the tobacco measure met Monday in an attempt to come up with a strategy for battling it. Chances are slim that they would have time to raise the money necessary to place a countermeasure on the November ballot.

“It’s outrageous,” Tony Najera of the American Lung Assn. of California said after reading the proposed initiative. “I have all the confidence that the voters will not be fooled by the desperate tactics of the tobacco industry.”

In documents filed last week with the state attorney general, the proponent of the Uniform Tobacco Control Act is listed as Donna Maret-Fahrenholtz, a restaurant owner in Playa del Rey. Maret-Fahrenholtz, who could not be reached, has been involved in fights against local smoking bans.

Stitzenberger said he expects to receive donations from Los Angeles restaurant owners opposed to Los Angeles’ smoking ban, and from a group of small restaurant and bar owners known as the California Business and Restaurant Assn. The California Restaurant Assn., the state’s largest restaurant association, has called for a statewide smoking ban and is likely to oppose the initiative.

A veteran consultant involved in the initiative industry said other tobacco companies and the industry-funded Tobacco Institute are not involved. “There is no other company involved with this” other than Philip Morris, said the consultant, who asked to remain anonymous.

Representatives of Philip Morris U.S.A., the tobacco arm of the food and tobacco conglomerate, did not return phone calls.

Under the initiative, the Legislature would need a two-thirds vote to make any changes in smoking laws. Tobacco industry lobbyists are influential in Sacramento and cigarette manufacturers are heavy contributors to legislative races.

More than 100 cities and counties in California have banned smoking in restaurants and at least 70 have prohibited smoking in all enclosed workplaces.

Recently, the Orange County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that will prohibit smoking in restaurants, retail stores and businesses in unincorporated areas by 1995. And many of the county’s cities, including Anaheim, Santa Ana, San Juan Capistrano, Seal Beach, Laguna Hills and Huntington Beach, have passed ordinances restricting smoking.

The proposed initiative would permit smoking in 25% of the dining area of restaurants so long as they provide ventilation set forth in the initiative. The ventilation standards listed in the initiative are not designed to protect against the ill effects of second-hand smoke.

The measure also would permit smoking in bars, private offices, ventilated conference rooms, 25% of the seating areas in employee cafeterias, designated smoking lounges in workplaces, portions of bowling allies, hotel lobbies and conference rooms, card clubs and racetracks.

The measure would permit business and restaurant owners to ban smoking in their establishments.

The attorney general has 45 days to analyze the initiative, write a summary and give the measure a title. Once the measure has a title and summary, the proponents can begin gathering signatures.

The Dolphin Group will have to rush to get the measure on the ballot because the secretary of state suggests that signatures for a measure headed for the November ballot be submitted by April 22.

The measure needs 385,000 valid signatures of registered voters, and Stitzenberger said he is negotiating with the two major California firms that gather petition signatures.

“We’d have to be very lucky to make the ’94 ballot,” Stitzenberger said.

If the initiative does not qualify this year, he said, his company will attempt to place the measure on a 1996 ballot.

He said the politically influential Sacramento law firm of Nielsen & Merksamer, which represents Gov. Pete Wilson, wrote the measure. Wilson’s campaign staff was unaware of the planned initiative.

Stitzenberger said the initiative would clarify the situation in which individual cities and counties have created a complicated “patchwork quilt.” “There is no level playing field” for businesses, he said.

Once the measure is on the ballot, Stitzenberger said he believes he will obtain campaign money from the organizations that supported Tucker’s bill, including the California Hotel and Motel Assn., California Manufacturers Assn., and perhaps the state Chamber of Commerce.

“This is a brutal assault on local control,” said Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Brentwood), who carried a bill last year to ban smoking in virtually all indoor workplaces but was stalled in the Senate. “This would be a huge retreat just at a time when the evidence is overwhelming that secondhand smoke kills.”

Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this story.