Along with being Baltimore’s only business to hold a 24-hour liquor license,  Caesars’ Horseshoe Casino has a new distinction – it will be the only entertainment, sports or hospitality facility exempt from the pending ban on electronic cigarettes.

The City Council passed an anti-“vaping” bill on Monday, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake says she’ll sign it.

Going into the Council meeting on Monday, Bill 14-0371 had one significant exemption – taverns and restaurants could opt out of the ban if they posted signage to that effect. Otherwise, e-cigarettes would be prohibited inside any venue where vaping is not the primary source of revenue, such as the Baltimore Convention Center, Royal Farms Arena, hotels, M&T Bank Stadium, Orioles Park at Camden Yards, etc.

An “employer or other person in charge” will face a $750 fine for violating the ban and the vaper himself a $500 penalty.

Quick Work

But over the space of 1 minute and 20 seconds, the bill was amended and approved to exempt Horseshoe Casino – with literally no one in the audience the wiser.

How could that be?

Could it be the way that Councilman James B. Kraft presented the amendment on the Council floor? Or was it the way the amendment was written that obscured who was getting what benefit?

Regarding option 1, here is what Kraft said (in full) while introducing the amendment to the Council:

“This is an amendment that was originally in the amendment definitions. It got stricken when we amended those definitions and took out one proposed amendment, put in another proposed amendment. This clarifies it. It has to do with the casino.”

And here is the text of the amendment, distributed to Kraft’s fellow Council members but not, at the time of passage, available to the public or media:

“This subtitle does not apply to the use of electronic smoking devices in a facility that has been awarded a Video Lottery Operation License by the Maryland Video Lottery Location Commission under State Government Article, Title 9, Subtitle 1A.”

Introducing an amendment to a bill after it has gone through a public hearing in committee is fairly unusual.

Introducing an amendment on third and final reader is so rare that it requires a Council vote to suspend Rule 12-3B in order to advance the bill to passage.

This was done for Bill 14-0371 under the auspices of Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, who made an apt observation about transparency at Council meetings, which we will get to shortly.

Kraft Explains

Asked what was going on, Kraft offered a scenario of special pleading and Council overwork in an interview with The Brew.

He said that the bill was first subject to a series of suggested amendments by Frank D. Boston III, a lobbyist for the Baltimore Licensed Beverage Association who also works for the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., a unit of Altria, the nation’s leading cigarette manufacturer (Virginia Slims, Marlboro, Chesterfield, etc.).

“Boston was representing the tobacco industry and wanted to exempt nearly every business [from the vaping ban] except where kids were. I told him, ‘We’re not doing that.’”

Instead, the Judiciary and Legislative Investigations Committee that Kraft chairs added an amendment on second reader that let restaurants and bars permit vaping as long as they notified their patrons that e-smoking devices are “allowed on or in designated areas of the premises, as the case may be.”

Like other companies in the entertainment business, Horseshoe Casino has restaurants and bars that would be exempt under the ban. But Kraft said he was notified “on behalf of a number of folks” that Horseshoe management wanted the whole casino exempted.

(At first, Kraft thought it was the Baltimore Development Corp. requesting the casino exemption, but he said he later found out it was Caesars Entertainment, operator and part owner of the Russell Street casino.)

The casino exemption was deep within Frank Boston’s amendments, Kraft said. When Boston’s amendments were rejected – so was the casino’s. This led to the doubling up of inquiries by a casino representative – identified by other sources as attorney Stanley S. Fine – to win the exemption.

Kraft said he had intended to introduce the casino amendment at the Council’s November 10 meeting. But “the last thing we needed was to put in an amendment that night,” he said, because the agenda was so full with the proposed ban on plastic bags and requirement of body cameras for police.

So Kraft said he waited until this Monday’s meeting when the bill was slotted for third and final reader.

A Deciding Factor

Was the exemption done as a special favor to the casino or to the mayor, who has staked her property tax rate reduction plan on bountiful future casino revenues?

“It wasn’t favored because it is a unique facility. It offers a unique entertainment and has unique requirements,” Kraft said.

He continued, “One thing that’s unique is that children are not allowed in it. That is the clearly distinguishing factor. If children were in it, I would have never put it in the bill.”

All but two Council members voted in favor of the amendment on Monday night. The dissenters were Helen L. Holton and Mary Pat Clarke.

Clarke told us that she was one of the original sponsors of the bill, but “when the casino thing came up, it was like ‘no.’ It was just too arbitrary. If you do a no smoking bill in Baltimore, you have to be consistent.”

Competition Question

Kraft and other supporters said Caesars told them that the exemption was needed so the casino could remain competitive with other casinos, like Maryland Live! in Anne Arundel County, that are not subject to a vaping ban.

Only Baltimore City has passed such legislation. The General Assembly rejected a proposed no-vaping law statewide.

Weighing in on the matter at the end of Monday’s meeting was Council President Young. Frustrated when Councilwoman Rochelle “Rikki” Spector kept attacking another bill for “lack of transparency,” Young told her:

“We just had an amendment to allow smoking in the casinos. We didn’t have no public input on that, yet we passed it. So don’t talk to me about transparency unless we are transparent with everything we do in this body.”

A fitting epitaph for this vaping story?

Below: the Council’s November 17 meeting. Start at 24:00 for the Horseshoe amendment.