Plan Would Unite O.C. Ordinances : Health: Anti-smoking rules differ from city to city. Most workplaces don’t allow employees to light up; federal ban would ensure that.

The Clinton Administration’s proposal Friday to ban smoking in virtually all of America’s indoor workplaces would not change the habits of most employers in Orange County, but it would help clear the air at several city halls.

Some city ordinances, such as one set to take effect this summer in Laguna Hills, ban smoking in workplaces outright. But a majority of city laws are more selective, regulating smoking in certain areas, such as restaurants and restrooms, but not all public places.

The issue locally will get even more complicated next year. Orange County has voted to prohibit smoking in all businesses, eateries and retail stores by January, 1995--but only in unincorporated areas.

The federal law proposed Friday by Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich would provide a uniform code to give nonsmokers nationwide the protection that local ordinances have not always provided, anti-smoking advocates said.

“It’s about time,” said Phil Barnett, an administrative aide for U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who is sponsoring his own no-smoking bill in Congress. In Orange County, he said, “anti-smoking laws are such a patchwork.”

That sentiment is shared by many city officials who have been struggling to strike a balance between those who want to live smoke-free and those who advocate smokers’ rights.

“It would be very good,” said Wayne Peterson(, a city councilman for Laguna Beach. “All restaurants and workplaces would be treated the same rather than this piecemeal approach.” Laguna Beach, which now restricts smoking in restaurants and workplaces, will prohibit smoking in all restaurants by Jan. 1, 1995.

Most employers regulate smoking, and increasingly that means a total ban in their buildings, said Elizabeth Winfree-Lydon, a senior staff consultant at The Employers Group, a trade association with 1,000 local members.

State law, city ordinances and social pressure have forced changes in just the past few years, she said. “Fifteen years ago, meetings would be held in smoke-filled rooms; people would be smoking in seminars. Now that’s unheard of.”

A smoker herself, Winfree-Lydon works in a nonsmoking five-story building in Santa Ana. “It’s not a problem,” she said. “I just step outside.”

At Cushman & Wakefield’s office management division in Santa Ana, smoking is allowed only in hallways and foyers, administrator Peggy Roland Sanchez said. About 90% of businesses in her company’s office buildings prohibit smoking in their offices, she said.

More stringent are Koll Management Services Inc. and C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, neither of which allow smoking in their office buildings.

Corporate nonsmoking regulations are often far stricter than city ordinances.

Santa Ana, for instance, bans smoking in 22 city buildings but has no law that prohibits lighting up anywhere else, including restaurants. But at Ingram Micro Inc., a computer distributor located in the city, all offices are smoke-free. Employees who smoke must go outside to do so.

Even that is frowned on by the corporation.

“It looks tacky to have people out front smoking,” said nonsmoker Marilyn Sutherland, assistant to company President Sam Inman.

The proposed federal law is not without its critics.

At the bar in the Bombay Bicycle Club, a Santa Ana restaurant, Kevin Francis, 57, and Doug Denniston, 31, argued about the issue Friday afternoon.

“I am for it,” said Denniston as his lunch partner finished his fish and chips, then lit a cigarette.

Taking a drag, Francis complained about “being ragged at” for the past several years. As for the new proposal, he said, “I am opposed to it, not because I am a smoker but because it infringes on people’s rights.”

Still other opponents of government-sponsored smoking regulations say that what they fear most is bureaucracy.

“I really prefer a smoke-free environment, and that is what I have,” said Thomas Wilck, president of Thomas Wilck Associates Inc., an Irvine public relations firm. “But with the legislation will come more regulations, and we will have to end up filling out more paperwork.”

Times staff writer Michael Flagg contributed to this report.