SMOKERS SPILLED OUT of the Matador on Friday night, September 10, crowding the sidewalk on West Burnside. Around 1 am, one bar-goer wandered a little too close to the door and bam, a staked-out state health inspector wrote the Matador a $800 fine on the spot for allowing smokers within 10 feet of its doorway.
Since the Oregon Smokefree Workplace law cleared cigarettes out of saloons in January 2009, bars have enjoyed healthier and less-smelly interiors. But Portland’s bar owners say enforcement—which also bans smoking within 10 feet from any doorway, open window, or vent—has led to unfair fines and complaints as bars stretch their staff to police the public sidewalk.
The sidewalk outside the Matador is eight feet wide and includes a bus stop.
“It’s one thing to enforce it inside,” says Matador owner Casey Maxwell. “But the way this is set up, someone walking by outside could get us a ticket. They passed [the law], and they didn’t really think of the consequences.”
Dylan Bird owns the Bitter End Pub right next door and has the same complaint: “If someone walks down the street with a cigarette in their hand, all the bars on this street are in violation.”
From January 2009 to September 2010, the state received 387 smoking complaints against Multnomah County businesses. Of the seven found in violation, three were fined. One was the Matador. The other two received fines for $500 and $1,100.
The department of public health couldn’t comment on the Matador’s fine because it was too recent to appear in its records. But it said businesses typically receive letters before agents show up to enforce the ban.
To protect workers, the state keeps complaints about smoking anonymous. But bar owners believe some complaints are frivolous, filed by disgruntled customers and employees.
“It could be someone we threw out of the bar for being a belligerent drunk,” says Bird. “Anyone who’s mad at the business can call it in.”
Joshua Dommermuth, manager of Backspace, says his business received a warning letter soon after the ban went into effect, but the complaint was so vaguely worded that it was unhelpful. “There was no date or a time or anything,” says Dommermuth. “We concluded that it was made up.”
Jonathan Modie, a spokesman for the Oregon Public Health Division, says that in the interest of keeping workers safe from secondhand smoke, the state has to look into all complaints. “Not every complaint is valid, but we have to investigate all of them,” says Modie.
Some bars, like Ground Kontrol, have taken simple measures to push smokers beyond the 10-foot zone. Ground Kontrol chalked a 10-foot circle outside its door and put an ashtray and umbrella outside the zone. But manager Art Santana says staff still has to be vigilant.
Some bars, like Tube on NW 3rd, have even moved their security guards outside to keep an eye on smokers instead of drinkers. That’s led to more fights breaking out inside, says Tube owner Mikey McKennedy.
“We’re a tiny bar,” he says. “I can’t afford to pay two door guys. It’s a huge pain in the ass, and a major issue for us.”
Wow ‘unforeseen’ unintended negative consequences of a nanny state law. Color me shocked.
Sound’s like extortion to me.
I like Ground Kontrol’s solution; just draw a big fucking circle on the sidewalk! Sometimes, the most obvious ideas are the best ones.
The state should distribute fine revenues in cash to smokers smoking the correct distance away. This would have interesting effects at bars frequented by assholes.
@El Dulce – That circle wouldn’t have changed anything – that’s not a solution. The proverbial ‘guy walking by’ would still stepped right over it. Especially if he was drunk.
If the officer was right there, he should have ticketed the smoker. Why is it the bar’s job to enforce city laws on public property? Should they also be stopping speeders, and checking for warrants? Those three fined bars should take the city to court.
Better yet, quit babysitting adults.
The real question is why does anyone file a complaint in the first place. Smokers have been pushed out of all indoor public places for some time now, so anyone who still complains is clearly doing so out of spite, not out of any real concern for nonsmokers’ health. This is just another example of politicians creating a revenue enhancing racket full well knowing there are enough squares and nannies willing to passive aggressively anonymously complain so as to garner the government more cash when the health police come marching in. Let’s face it, a lot of anti-smokers won’t be happy until all smokers are either dead, imprisoned in camps or frog-marched through smoke-free Pioneer Square into a secret dungeon beneath Starbucks where they’ll be subjected to a continuous audio loop of Dan Saltzman talking about how family friendly Portland is until they swear they’ll stop buying American Spirits.
This is a much better post than the comments on the beer and wine restrictions, which is (frankly) one of the worst articles I have read on a non-Fox based website. That said, I am curious when the Mercury suddenly became a tool of the Republican push to shield businesses against all evil.
A few things the Matador and others should already have known: 1) The OLCC is corrupt, and they could have been stuck with an $800 fine because they took too long bringing someone their dinner. 2) If you feel sorry for any of the companies above, start paying cash. Serving for credit and debit sales easily costs as much as those fines. Finally, if the businesses want to make a point, they should post the fines where waiting customers can see them, and thus maybe apply some pressure on the few a-holes who still can’t walk out in the cold to give themselves cancer.
I do sort of agree that the law should be restricted to customers and employees, but on the other hand, maybe this is just the cost of doing business downtown (since the only way to get a cop into SE is to park in the wrong place). If we want to focus on repealing stupid laws, how about the extra tax on hybrids (to account for the gas tax they aren’t paying).
sexmachine:
I fell in to a burnin’ ring of fire! (sorry, couldn’t help it)
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Oh, cry me a river.
Act the fool.Kill your liver.Go broke.I’ll stay home and kill my lungs on the back porch.
Can you smoke medical marijuana inside, how about in the doctor’s waiting room? Or within 10 ft of the outside door? I am so confused dude………..
Why are they fining the places so much? Shouldn’t the violators be the ones fined? Most of the violating smokers I’ve seen are usually the belligerent *ssholes in this case being all ‘I’ll smoke where I d*mn well please!”, and the f-u types.
Further – I think the government SHOULD get in legal trouble if a lawyer took this law up. The bar owner probably doesn’t have any legal ability to throw someone off a section of sidewalk in front of their building like they can throw someone out of a premise they own. Adam’s Police State has already gotten in trouble by trying to ban homeless dudes with the ‘sit/lie’ law. I bet this one is just as legally dubious.
Comon’ hordes of lawyers – take this one up!
Seems pretty straightforward – just tweak the law so that the smoker has to be within the zone for at least 30 seconds for it to be an infringement. Problem goes away, and the bars who willfully ignore the rules can’t bitch about it any more.
Just because a law isn’t 100% perfect doesn’t mean the whole law is wrong…
Multnomah county is nothing but a bunch of anti business racketeers who see their citizens as walking dollars signs, prime for a good raping.
Sounds like corruption to me. Since when is it a bartender’s job to babysit all the patrons of the bar simultaneously? How are people that are inside the bar supposed to control the people outside? If someone got assaulted within ten feet of the door is that the matador’s fault too?
The right thing to do would be to give the people violating the rule a warning, and fine them if they do not comply. And if they do, leave it alone. But it seems very clear that doing the right thing isn’t what’s important to these people handing out the tickets. It’s about the money… shocking.
What makes me not so gruntled is that we are all paying for this.
Armed guards with a very low threshold for feeling threatened by cigarette smokers. This should solve the problem of criminals attempting to smoke within 10 feet of their businesses. I propose the same rules of deadly force as the Portland Police use. I propose hiring guards with disability such as a phobia about lit cigarettes triggering their fight or flight mechanism into a massive self defense action.