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Health department supports smoking ban

NEW CUMBERLAND — As the Hancock County Commission continued to table a request to reverse the Clean Air Act, members of the Hancock County Health Department continued to provide comments in favor of the act.

Carolyne Baker and Donna Gialluco, both county health department personnel, expressed support of the Clean Air Act during Thursday’s commission meeting, providing additional insight and statistics on the downward economy in the county.

The act, passed in 2015, prohibits smoking inside buildings in the county.

Last month, an order request was presented by former MTR Gaming Group CEO Ted Arneault, which asked the commission to reconsider the act, particularly toward state video lottery license holders, such as Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort in Chester.

Baker, who works as a sanitarian for the department, commented on a statement Arneault made during the Jan. 6 meeting — when he first presented the order — to which he said the county lost nearly $800,000 to $900,000 in revenue from video lottery money not coming into the county, and that somewhere between 500 to 600 jobs were lost, with Mountaineer among the hardest hit.

Baker’s response included recent examples of closures she said had nothing to do with the Clean Air Act, but rather due to declining business and recent statistics in the county.

Among those statistics — taken from the 2000 U.S. Census along with estimates of 2015 — was that 20.7 percent of county residents are 65 years of age or older, 19.54 percent are under 18, 13.9 percent are under the age of 65 with a disability, and 13.7 percent of residents are in poverty, with the per capita income at $23,845.

“The consumer purchasing power is not what it used to be in this county either, so I’m just saying that those are reasons why businesses are struggling now,” Baker said. “Everything is not because of the clean indoor air. We just lost Sears. We’re losing JCPenney’s and Macy’s from the mall. It’s not because of the clean indoor air. It’s because of the economy.”

Baker also reported that Mountaineer had a 4 percent layoff (amounting to 93 jobs) of its workforce in 2008, and laid off another 47 employees in 2012, which she said again was due to the economy and population change and not from a smoking ban.

Meanwhile, Gialluco, who serves an administrative services assistant, issued a public apology to the commissioners following comments made at the last commission meeting held a week earlier, to which she believed the health board was being bullied in relation to the Clean Air Act.

“It was never my intention to insinuate that the county commission bullied any board of health member or any health department staff, although there’s different types of bullying and we’re not going into that,” Gialluco said. “I know each one of you personally, and I never intended for my comment to be directed at the county commissioners as a whole body or any of you individually.”

After apologizing, however, Gialluco clarified that while she did make the statement about being bullied, the comments were being directed to Arneault, although Gialluco did not mention him by name during the meeting.

“It was never intended to be for you all, but it was directed at the individual who brought you the proposed order, and I’m not even going to go there today as well,” Gialluco said.

Commissioners Jeff Davis and Joe Barnabei accepted Gialluco’s apology, and Davis thanked her for the clarification.

(Rappach can be contacted at srappach@reviewonline.com)

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