Latest news with #AnthonyPiagentini
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Smoking will be allowed again inside some Louisville businesses. Here's what to know
It's official: Louisvillians will soon be able to smoke inside cigar bars. Louisville Metro Council voted Thursday to create an exemption to the city's smoking ordinance. It allows patrons to smoke inside businesses that make at least 15% of their revenue from selling cigars or tobacco products. While there are a few rare places where cigars can be smoked indoors, including Derby City Gaming Downtown, the change would expand where indoor cigar smoking is allowed. "I think this is going to be a tremendous benefit to our community, aligned with our tourism industries, particularly around bourbonism, horse racing and others," said Councilman Anthony Piagentini, the ordinance's sponsor. The exemption does not include cigarettes or other smoking products. The ordinance also requires a smoke-free area for the delivery of items or mail and prohibits cigar smoke from passing into other businesses that might share a wall or other space with the cigar bar. It passed 20-6 despite facing opposition from health experts — and coming less than four years after a similar Metro Council measure failed with a 15-11 vote. Councilman Markus Winkler voted against the ordinance both in 2021 and on Thursday. "As somebody who likes to go to restaurants, occasionally goes to a bar and does not smoke, I enjoy being able to go to those establishments without coming home and smelling like an ashtray," he said. "I think that any loosening of that regulation, to me, opens the door to further reductions of (the smoking ban)." Unlike cigarettes, cigar smoke is often not inhaled. However, the National Cancer Institute says there is "no safe level of tobacco use." Councilman JP Lyninger quoted from John Hopkins Medicine: "Compared with nonsmokers, regular cigar smokers are four to 10 times more likely to die from oral cancer, esophageal cancer and laryngeal cancer." Lyninger also voiced concerns for workers' health — a point he brought up previously at the March 18 Labor and Economic Development Committee. "Workers do not enter into a 100% voluntary activity when they accept employment," Lyninger said. "They are doing it because they need a job. They need to feed their kids, they need to put a roof over their heads." Council members Shameka Parrish-Wright, Paula McCraney, Ben Reno-Weber and Betsy Ruhe were the other "no" votes. Proponents of the ordinance, meanwhile, say it will boost tourism. Louisville Tourism President and Chief Executive Officer Cleo Battle submitted a statement in support of the ordinance. "We know from countless conversations with visitors that there is demand for a venue where they can enjoy a premium bourbon alongside a cigar," Battle wrote. "Currently, guests looking for this experience are leaving Louisville and taking their business to Southern Indiana, which puts our hospitality industry at a disadvantage." Joshua Pickett, founder of the Louisville Cigar Company, previously told The Courier Journal the legislation would be a significant boost for his business. Despite repeated requests for comment from The Courier Journal, Mayor Craig Greenberg's spokespeople did not respond to an inquiry on his perspective on the ordinance. Former Mayor Greg Fischer previously commended the council for rejecting the similar 2021 ordinance. In the Republican Caucus meeting on Thursday, Piagentini said Greenberg would not veto the legislation, but he also would not sign it into law. This means the new cigar bar exemption won't go into effect until the start of the next council meeting on April 24th. Reach reporter Eleanor McCrary at EMcCrary@ or at @ellie_mccrary on X, formerly known as Twitter. This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville lifts smoking ban inside some businesses
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Under pressure from state GOP, Metro Council considers loosening lead paint protections
Facing pressure of preemption from Republican lawmakers in Frankfort, the Louisville Metro Council is considering a complete rewrite of its existing regulations on lead paint hazards in rental properties. A proposal brought by Metro Council Republican Caucus chair Anthony Piagentini would repeal and replace an ordinance passed unanimously by the council in 2022, and implemented in December 2024. His proposal follows the introduction of House Bill 173 in the Kentucky General Assembly by Rep. Ryan Dotson, R-Winchester, which would eliminate Louisville's existing regulations designed to protect children from lead poisoning in rental properties. Under the new ordinance from Piagentini, the responsibility of assessing rental properties for potential lead hazards would be shifted from landlords to Louisville Metro's code enforcement officers. Officers would be trained to detect lead hazards in homes, and would be required to take all "reasonable steps" to identify lead hazards during residential inspections of pre-1978 properties. Tenants would also be able to request an inspection by appointment, with priority given to homes where children reside. The newly proposed ordinance keeps a backstop in place, requiring inspection of at least some rental properties proactively, before a child can be exposed to lead — but it lacks the more stringent processes and transparency of existing regulations, which require older properties to be assessed for lead hazards and registered to the city within a set number of years. "The current lead rental registry ordinance more proactively identifies and eliminates lead hazards in rental property and serves those most vulnerable," Connie Mendel, chief health strategist for Louisville's Department of Public Health and Wellness, said in a statement. The new proposal, she said, would "still allow for the identification of hundreds of rental properties that could have lead hazards as well as for the enforcement to remove those hazards." Piagentini's proposed ordinance could be Louisville's only option for maintaining local control of regulation on lead paint in housing, and salvaging some form of protections. Dotson's bill in the state legislature, poised to snuff out Louisville's existing protections entirely, has begun to gather cosponsors and would be received by a Republican supermajority in both chambers. Lead is a potent neurotoxin, threatening the developing brain of young children. Since 2005, roughly 10,000 cases of childhood lead exposure have been documented in Louisville, and experts believe many more have gone unnoticed due to a lack of testing. The effects of lead on cognitive development, decision-making ability, memory, learning and behavior are lifelong and irreversible. Exposure can lead to difficulty in school, worse test scores, higher costs for special education programs or, eventually, the justice system. Louisville's existing lead protections came decades after action by some other U.S. cities, leaving thousands of local children vulnerable to poisoning for years, The Courier Journal found in a 2023 investigation. Local real estate interests have fought to reduce protections for years, the reporting found, despite evidence of the regulations' success in improving public health outcomes in cities such as Rochester, New York. "There is no cure for lead exposure," said Liz McQuillen, chief policy officer for Metro United Way. Childhood lead poisoning "can have really lifelong impact for those kids and those families," she said, "and there is no way to mitigate that once the child is exposed." Piagentini's proposed ordinance came following talks with state representatives, according to Metro Council President Brent Ackerson. There are "negotiations between him and Frankfort Republicans," Ackerson said, that may address the state's concerns about Louisville's lead ordinance and prevent the state from passing House Bill 173. Dotson's state legislation has not yet had a committee hearing. Its introduction spurred intense pushback from child health advocates, who said the bill "would cause irreparable harm to thousands of children, reduce the availability of safe and healthy housing stock, and saddle future Louisvillians with the costs." In 2022, Piagentini voted in favor of the current regulations, which he's now working to repeal. At the time, he complimented Democratic sponsor Cassie Chambers Armstrong for doing "yeoman's work in pulling this together." However, Piagentini said he's had some concerns about the 2022 ordinance, both then and now. "Although I voted for it, and do firmly believe we need to continue to attack this problem, I voted on it because it was better than some alternatives," he said. "But it wasn't exactly what I would have done." Piagentini said he believes the current ordinance assumes "everybody was guilty, and then you had to prove your innocence." Instead, he said he wants to focus more on "bad actors." Piagentini's role in the rewrite of the ordinance is why the legislation was unusually assigned to the council's Government Oversight, Audit and Appointments Committee, rather than the Equity, Community Affairs, Housing, Health and Education Committee, Ackerson said. Piagentini is the vice chair of the government oversight committee, which is expected to consider his proposed ordinance Tuesday. While Piagentini said his role as vice chair was a contributing factor to the legislation's committee assignment, he also said it "doesn't easily fall in any particular committee," and the council debated on several places where it could be heard. Piagentini hopes to continue working with representatives in Frankfort, he said, to limit preemption and help Louisville retain its local control. Chambers Armstrong, who sponsored Louisville's existing regulations on lead hazards in rental properties, now serves in the state Senate. In a statement, she encouraged council members to remain focused on the spirit of her original legislation: protecting the health of thousands of Louisville children. "I hope that any changes made will continue to center the need to protect children from the lifelong harms of lead exposure," she said. "This means it is essential that we retain local control to safeguard Louisville's most vulnerable children." Piagentini's newly proposed ordinance "is not as focused on the proactive prevention, which is best practice," McQuillen said, but "it is still a way that Louisville would be able to retain some tools to address that problem that we have." If Piagentini's proposed changes are signed into law, and state lawmakers retreat on plans to intervene, Louisville Metro Government would take on a bigger role in protecting children from lead exposure, shifting the onus away from property owners. It's unclear whether the Department of Codes and Regulations has the staff and resources necessary to keep tabs on lead hazards in thousands of rental properties around Louisville. At least 67 code enforcement officers have been trained as certified lead risk assessors already, according to the city. And the changes would discard some of the city's efforts to implement the current laws, including building out a public-facing Lead-Safe Housing Registry. The Department of Public Health and Wellness has already invested nearly $500,000 to implement the program in addition to hiring new staff, according to the agency, and some of the spending could now be in vain. However, Piagentini said he believes his legislation could be "budget neutral or even budget-saving." He pointed to another ordinance he's proposed, which would eliminate required random inspections by code enforcement officers, allowing the agency to reallocate resources toward lead hazard detection. Studies indicate a return on investment for lead poisoning prevention. Every tax dollar put into lead remediation in ordinances like Louisville's represents a return of at least $17, according to research from Pew, based on the known social and economic costs of lead poisoning. And each case of childhood lead exposure may cost taxpayers, on average, $50,000 in lifetime education and crime reduction costs, by some estimates — an expense of roughly half a billion dollars for Louisville's documented cases in the last two decades. More: Louisville stood by as thousands of kids were poisoned by lead paint. Is hope on the horizon? Connor Giffin is an environmental reporter for The Courier Journal. Reach him directly at cgiffin@ or on X @byconnorgiffin. Reach reporter Eleanor McCrary at EMcCrary@ or at @ellie_mccrary on X, formerly known as Twitter. This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville lead paint protections may be rolled back amid GOP pressure
