Kane County decides against enacting outdoor smoking ban

Smokers in Kane County can breathe easy now that county board members snuffed out a call for a ban on outdoor smoking Tuesday.

The county began researching a potential ban after a private citizen from Aurora approached the county board's development committee last month. Stacy Blaszak told the committee members she has a respiratory condition and outdoor smoking often impinges on her right and need to breathe as well as compromises her health and the health of babies and pets.

County staffers spent the last month researching any precedent for an outdoor smoking ban. At the most, communities have addressed the issue by inserting a clause into their public nuisance laws to address any unusual circumstances involving smoking, the staff reported. Development Director Mark VanKerkhoff said even organizations with missions to curb smoking said they only get a few of inquiries a year about how to institute an outdoor or residential smoking ban.

"It doesn't appear to be a hot topic locally or nationally," he said.

County Board Member Drew Frasz said he didn't see how it would hurt for the county to specifically mention smoking in its nuisance ordinance to address Blaszak's concerns. Frasz was also careful to say he didn't want to see anything that took away from someone's private property rights.

"I don't like smoking, but I do like property rights a lot more than I don't like smoking," Frasz said. "This really kind of smacks of Big Brother."

County Board Attorney Ken Shepro then advised that state law already allows a private citizen to sue someone if someone's smoking proves to be a true nuisance to them in an extreme case.

Having heard that, most committee members said they thought the county should let matters rest with whatever state laws address outdoor smoking problems. A motion to add a specific clause to the county's nuisance ordinance never materialized. Blaszak was not present at the meeting to defend her cause.