Parma Heights council debates removing family-employee exception from proposed smoking ban

Parma Heights City Council discussed changes to Chapter 619, the city's Clean Indoor Act, at a July 8 work session that centered on whether the draft should retain language treating employees related to business owners differently.

Council President Rounds opened the meeting at 5:30 p.m. and turned the item over to Safety Committee Chair Councilwoman Maruschak, who said the committee found parts of Chapter 619 outdated and presented a draft modeled on Ohio Revised Chapter 3794, renaming the ordinance the "Smoking Ban." "We've been working on this for about a year now. We have concluded that we are modeling it after the Ohio Revised Chapter 3794," she said, and asked councilors to review highlighted sections.

Councilwoman Palmisano pressed the council to strike the words "or are not related to the owner" from draft section 619.03(a) and to remove subsection (c) entirely. "Just because as a business owner you have decided to employ a family member, it doesn't mean that that family member should have less rights than another employee that is not a family member," Palmisano said, framing the change as a workers' rights protection.

Councilwoman Durichko asked whether the city could alter language taken from the Ohio Revised Code, and Council President Rounds said he believed the city could adopt rules that are more restrictive than state law but not less so. Director Schneider told council members that because Parma Heights is a charter community it may diverge from the ORC in certain respects and that there is no single fixed rule; Schneider also clarified that subsection (a) is specific to child-care or adult-care exemptions and that subsection (c) relates to enclosed areas not open to the public.

Councilman Vanek offered an example of how he interpreted subsection (c) to show where the language appeared unclear to members. Following questions about wording, Councilwoman Durichko asked the Law Department to rewrite the draft's final sentence to make the intended meaning clearer; Maruschak agreed the current phrasing is wordy and reiterated that subsection (c) as written appears to reflect the state's nonregulation of family-owned and operated workplaces where all employees are related to the owner.

No motion or vote was recorded during the work session. The next step, as stated on the record, is for the Law Department to re-draft the unclear sentence(s) and for councilors to review the revised language at a future meeting before any formal action is taken.