West Salem smokers and business owners once again face the possibility of a locally imposed ban.

When the West Salem Village Board tabled a smoking ban ordinance in February, trustees saw no reason to continuing working on a bill that could be superceded by a statewide ban that was in the works.

But that never happened. The bill, which would have banned smoking in all Wisconsin workplaces, died in committee.

Sue Lynch, a West Salem resident and a consultant for Smoke Free Wisconsin, approached the village board at its regular meeting Tuesday asking to begin the process anew.

“The problem that I’m hearing is that you don’t want to be an island,” Lynch told the board.

She went on to explain that her committee’s goal was to make all La Crosse County workplaces smoke free by Jan. 1, 2009, to prevent any community, like West Salem, from becoming an island, meaning restaurant and bar patrons would bypass local smoke-free establishments for smoker-friendly ones in communities nearby.

The rub is she’ll have to do it one community at a time. As Lynch explained it, La Crosse County cannot pass a smoking ordinance that would affect individual municipalities.

It would only affect bars and restaurants in towns, not villages and cities.

“If the county can’t do it, then we’ve got a real problem,” said Village President Dennis Manthei.

Trustee J. Terry Hanson said the focus of the local ordinance was too broad.

“If you’ve got all the workplaces smoke free right now that aren’t bars and restaurants, aren’t we talking about an ordinance for restaurants and bars instead of workplaces?” Hanson asked.

“It’s my opinion that management has done a pretty good job of protecting their workers,” he added.

“A workplace is a workplace,” Lynch said in an interview following the meeting.

Lynch said restaurant associations that previously opposed the statewide ban favored it after learning that there wasn’t a substantial amount of income lost by establishments in cities where bans were in place.

The process of banning workplace smoking in West Salem began more than 18 months ago.

No indication was given on when the matter will be taken up again.

The city of Eau Claire’s workplace smoking ban took effect July 1. Wausau in 2005.

Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan and Illinois have all passed laws prohibiting smoking in public places.

See next week’s Coulee News for more coverage of the Aug. 5 board meeting.