A bill that would have eased the state’s smoking ban in bars that sell lottery tickets is dead. Still alive is a measure that would delete the current exemption that allows smoking on the gaming floors in state-owned casinos.
The House Health and Social Services Committee held an impromptu meeting at the rail of the rotunda outside the House Chambers on Thursday and replaced the language in House Bill 2340 with that previously contained in HB 2039.
The so called “gut-and-go” procedure was a parliamentary maneuver to keep the casino-exemption proposal alive, according to Committee Chair Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican.
HB 2340 was exempt from looming legislative deadlines. HB 2039 was not.
“It’s gone,” Landwehr said of the measure that would have exempted bars that sell lottery tickets from the statewide public smoking ban enacted last year.
Landwehr held hearings Wednesday on both measures.
It remains uncertain if the new version of HB 2340 will make it to the floor of the full house for debate.
Landwehr said that was for House leadership to decide and that she hadn’t yet talked to them about it as of early Friday.