Owner: Smoking Ban Killed Pub
?
Town Records Show Business In Financial Trouble Long Before
By TRACY GORDON FOX
Courant Staff Writer
July 14 2005
COLCHESTER — After nearly two decades in business, Moriarty’s Pub was done in by the ban on smoking, its owner said.
Larry Clough closed the bar recently after 19 years of operating in the Westchester section of town.
“We had a little bit of problems before, but the smoking ban put the last nail in the coffin,” Clough said this week. “From the moment it started, we lost a lot of customers.”
Clough, along with several other bar owners in southeastern Connecticut, sued the state last summer because they were, they said, losing a lot of business to the Indian-run casinos and private clubs, which allow smoking.
But Judge Douglas S. Lavine rejected their arguments, saying the legislature had a rational basis to create the exemptions. The judge granted deference to the legislature, which passed the smoking ban by a wide margin before the law was signed last year by then-Gov. John G. Rowland.
Moriarty’s is one of several bars that has closed in eastern Connecticut after the ban, said attorney Jan Trendowski of Essex, who represented the bars in the lawsuit. Lavine’s decision is being appealed, Trendowski said.
“Connecticut’s smoking ban is unique because of the huge exception,” Trendowski said. “In other states, it’s a blanket ban.”
Clough said he could not compete with local clubs like the Polish Club, the Fish and Game Club and the Farmer’s Club, where smoking is allowed.
“I would say on a Monday night, when I normally would have 35 to 40 people, I had three people in the place, including myself,” Clough said. “They were going to the private clubs in town.”
“The average person who is a bar person likes to have a cigarette and a beer and a bite to eat. That’s all part of it,” he said.
Town records show that Moriarty’s was having financial difficulty in 2001, long before the smoking ban went into effect. He owes more than $38,800 in federal taxes and also owes state taxes, he said.
“We went through some tough times here and there,” Clough said. “To be honest, the place was old, and I didn’t have the money to renovate it.”
Clough said that recently the state revenue services department ordered him to give up his restaurant license or be arrested for the taxes he owed.
“My problem was one month I would pay federal taxes and the next month I would pay the rent, and then I would pay the state,” Clough. “It just kept accumulating.”
Clough said he fears he could still be arrested for the state sales taxes he owes. Right now, he said, he is so destitute that he needs food stamps to eat.
“I’ve never been rich, but at least I’ve been comfortable,” Clough said. “I have $37 in my pocket.”
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said most of the response to the smoking ban has been positive and that restaurants and bars have said their business is stronger. He said the legislature has the option to remove the exception for clubs.
“So far as I’m aware, his claim is the first that any bar or restaurant has shut down because of the smoking ban,” Blumenthal said. “He is blaming his financial troubles on the statute.”
?
http://www.courant.com/news/local/ec/hc-colnosmoke0714.artjul14,0,568244.story
?
?
