Cigar-bar owners tell committee state affidavit demands exceed statute; bill would narrow requirements and set timelines

Attorney Seth Tompkins, representing cigar-bar owners and liquor-license clients, told the House Regulatory Reform Committee that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has turned a short statutory affidavit for indoor-clean-air exemptions into an onerous, 50-page annual requirement.

Tompkins said the department routinely asks for documents and photographs beyond the statute's original intent and that approval decisions can take seven to eight months. "The department has created a licensing scheme for a property right instead of an exemption for the indoor clean air act," he said, urging statutory clarification to limit agency requests to items necessary to show the 10% threshold for qualifying cigar-bar activity.

He recommended adding a statutory transfer process for exemptions, a 30-day agency turnaround, and a more focused affidavit. Committee members asked about budget and staffing impacts; Tompkins said the bill could reduce administrative burdens and that a 30-day turnaround would incentivize narrower requests from the agency.

The committee did not vote on the measure during the hearing; Tompkins and industry representatives provided detailed examples of multi-month delays, repeated correction cycles and the lack of a formal transfer mechanism in statute.