Perfect Illustration

The recent change by the Hennepin County to allow some exemptions to the smoking ban illustrates the complexity of the situation. You might want a pen and paper to keep track. You still cannot smoke at any bars or restaurants in Bloomington, they have a city ordinance. Same goes in Minneapolis thanks to ordinance passed in 2004. In Richfield it gets more complicated. The exemption provided by Hennepin County is for establishments that sell more liquor than food, however in Richfield we have a nifty ordinance that prevents restaurants and bars that serve wine or strong beer from selling more liquor than food. So that only leaves two categories that can get the exemption, private clubs and restaurants that sell 3.2 beer such as bowling allies. The next problem is that the 3.2 joints generally sell more food than beer. The good news is that our local VFW and Legion club now can choose to [ed.] offer smoking indoors again. These places were hardest hit by the ban. So this should be making charitable gambling interest happy. This situation does illustrate a problem, the uneven playing field. Now the Richfield Legion club has an unfair advantage over the Minneapolis and Bloomington locations. It will be interesting to see if Richfield is content with their unusual ordinance or join the neighbors. UPDATE: A reader took umbrage to one of my statements so I modified my statement slightly to make my point more clear. The italic/bold words were added. The point is a Legion Club is not a public building I am required to enter, therefore I do not go there regularly. (Please do not tell me about about the workers do not choose to work there.)