Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

TOPEKA — The chairwoman of the House Health and Human Services Committee tried twice Wednesday to meet with Senate negotiators to discuss possible changes to a bill that would limit smoking in public places, but the senators didn’t show up.

Rep. Brenda Landwehr, the Wichita Republican who chairs the House committee, said she called for the meetings to discuss House Bill 2221, which has been stuck in conference since last year.

The bill contains smoking ban language approved twice by the Senate in 2009. It would limit smoking in most public places with a handful of exceptions, including private clubs, retail tobacco stores and the gaming floors of state-owned casinos.

Senators inserted the language into a House bill in an effort to get a smoking ban proposal to the House floor. House Republican leaders, including Landwehr, were opposed to a smoking ban and succeeded in keeping other proposals bottled up in committee.

Motion to concur

HB 2221 is expected to come to a vote on the House floor Thursday, when legislators who support a statewide smoking ban plan to offer a motion to concur with the Senate’s alterations.

“We’ve got a lot of people out there helping on this,” said Anne Spiess, a spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society. “We’re pretty geared up for what I think will be a good debate.”

House health committee members Reps. Jill Quigley, R-Lenexa; Cindy Neighbor, D-Shawnee, and Mike Slattery, D-Mission, are among those who have said they would support the bill on the floor, Spiess said.

Reps. Charles Roth, R-Salina, and Tom Burroughs, D-Kansas City, along with Lisa Benlon, D-Overland Park and Raj Goyle, D-Wichita, have also been among the House members active in pushing to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Landwehr, who has often said she is philosophically opposed to smoking bans, said Wednesday afternoon that she hoped to meet with Senate negotiators to discuss possible amendments to their bill.

Earlier this session, her own preferred version of a statewide smoking ban, HB 2642 was introduced.

But anti-smoking advocates, including the governor, said it would be worse than no ban at all because it would override dozens of stricter local ordinances already in place. It was modeled on the Wichita ordinance, which allows exemptions for businesses that pay a fee and create designated smoking areas.

Advocates in favor of the ban say they are optimistic that the House will approve the bill.

“I think that especially over the last six months or so that Kansans have been very vocal about their support for this,” said Jake Lowen of Clean Air Kansas. “I think that the groundswell of support has convinced a lot of lawmakers who were previously unsure about how they felt and has made them come over to the side of public health. I’m optimistic that when this comes up for a vote that we’ll see enough support to carry it over the line.”

The motion to concur is debatable but would not let House members amend the bill further.

No written proposal

Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia, the Senate health committee chairman, said he had asked Landwehr last week to provide a written proposal before convening the conference committee.

He said he still hadn’t received it and in any event scheduling conflicts prevented the senators from joining the conference committee Wednesday.

He said he would still be willing to meet to discuss the bill as long as he has enough time to review a written proposal.

“She took an entire week to review her ideas and proposals,” Barnett said. “I asked for an adequate amount of time for interested parties in the Senate to review her requests and recommendations.”

The House is scheduled to convene at 11 a.m. Thursday.