While it appears that Rob Messinger will get a reprieve from the Wauwatosa smoking ban for his tavern/restaurant "Hector's -- A Mexican Restaurant," he's not acting like it was a major victory or anything.

"It's a social experiment that's cost me $125,000," he says of the ban on smoking in taverns and restaurants that enveloped the suburb in July. Messinger's 17-year-old establishment falls under the ban because Hector's, located at 7118 W. State St., sells more food than booze. Messinger has watched his sales plummet since July, which he says is a direct result of the ban. Taverns in 'Tosa are still a smoke 'em if you got 'em proposition.

The ban has made 'Tosa an island among the metro area -- the only municipality that has regulated smoking. Three blocks east on State Street sits the famous Saz's on State, which happens to be in Milwaukee and allows smoking. Messinger says he has had customers tell him they go east now that they can't smoke in his joint.

After watching his bottom line collapse by 32 percent in October and 21 percent in November over last year, Messinger was desperate. One Saturday night in late December he put out ashtrays on the bar and started smoking, only to have the authorities called by some patrons. What he found, however, was a keystone cop situation where police told him that they had no authority to enforce the ban or to hand out tickets for violators.

"I wanted to get arrested so I could challenge it in court," he says. And court is where he still intends to take the ordinance. "It unfairly singles places like mine out for prosecution."

A city council committee this week unanimously approved an exemption to the smoking ban for Messinger's place (along with Bigg's Roadhouse, 1900 N. Mayfair Rd.), after he showed that the revenue losses were a result of the smoke-free rule. The decision came after his request in October for an exemption was ignored, he says. The exemption expires in 18 months, however, and there is no chance for an extension.

The cuts in revenue have caused him to require employees to pay substantially more for their health care and he readily admits that making payroll has been trouble at times.

"And what has it done to better the health of Wauwatosans?" he says.

Messinger wouldn't comment on talk that other places in the city that serve booze and food have used creative accounting to adjust their numbers to show liquor accounting for more than 51 percent of their sales so that they can still offer ashtrays to their customers. The ordinance requires that taverns show the city their books to prove that they sell 51 percent booze, but does not ask for any independent verification. An irony Messinger noted was that former Ald. Jim Sullivan, a big proponent of the ban who was elected to the state Senate in November, held a fund-raiser shortly after the ‘Tosa smoke ban took place -- in a Milwaukee tavern where tobacco can burn freely.

But he'll take the reprieve and smoke with gusto in the next 18 months while he still can. "We'll start giving away free cigarettes on Tuesdays or something like that," Messinger says. He's also going to look into a court challenge of the rule as well.

In the meantime, he says he's uncertain about the future of Hector's, since in a year and a half he'll have to start watching the revenue take a slide again. Moving is an option, but, since he owns the building, he said he could also "just become another joint on State Street that sells burgers and beer."

Developing Costs: The ink is barely dry on the City of Milwaukee's aid package for Towne Realty to develop the former Pabst Brewery site and already the price tag has gone up. In 2005 the Common Council rejected a proposal from another developer that would have the city chip in $39 million to boost the effort. Towne originally asked for $29 million from the city, but with interest on bonds, the cost is going to be over $40 million. The addendum to the city's agreement with Towne adds an extra $100,000 to the tab for a storm water management plan that seemed to have been left out of the original deal. That brings the direct assistance total to $29,102,271.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive: Rockwell Automation's announcement that it was giving UW-Milwaukee a $1 million grant to enhance the university's engineering received hugs and kisses from most media in Milwaukee, but there was one key point buried in the story-why it hasn't happened sooner. After all, Rockwell's Allen-Bradley facility has been a fixture on the Milwaukee skyline since 1903 and its CEO, Keith Nosbusch is a UWM alum.

The answer? UWM never asked Rockwell to be a partner.

So much for the university's much-touted and pricey public relations campaign about the "Milwaukee Idea," birthed by former chancellor Nancy Zimpher. While seemingly becoming obsessed with boosting basketball attendance, Zimpher and her predecessor, Carlos Santiago, must not have driven by the world's largest four-sided clock much and thought about what it could do for the U. Zimpher bolted for the job as president of the University of Cincinnati in 2003 and has endeared herself to the university community there so much so that a student newspaper poll found this week that 76 percent of respondents say her contract shouldn't be renewed. She also spurred several recall petition sites on her behalf after firing popular men's basketball coach Bob Huggins while he was out of town on vacation. Santiago this year announced that UWM would try to increase its research budget from $39 million to $100 million in ten years.

Breathe Deep: Gov. Jim Doyle didn't do much in his first term to establish any sort of environmental creds: Not fulfilling promises to revamp the Department of Natural Resources; restore the public intervener post and backing a pro-business bill known as the Wisconsin Jobs Initiative that allowed for less public scrutiny and input into environmental concerns while curtailing DNR pollution regulations. Now Doyle has looked to the eastern horizon from the statehouse and pronounced the air in Milwaukee's metro area clean. Doyle is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to change its view of the air quality in the region and allow southeastern Wisconsin to loosen its clean air standards. Counties along Lake Michigan have stricter emission standards because we also have bad air, hence the half-dozen or so "Ozone Action Days" we get per year that warn folks with breathing issues to stay inside and don't breath so much. Doyle has bought the business argument that air quality issues make it bad for business expansion, as opposed to the idea that clean business practices would be a better solution.

Tommy's Got Jim: When Tommy Thompson was governor of our fair state, it was readily understood that Jim Klauser was pulling the strings on the gubernatorial puppet. Welfare reform and the paving of the Northwoods were generally attributed to having been the brainchild of "Diamond Jim" as he was known. Jim's back in Tommy's camp as the ex-guv and health secretary makes a quixotic run for president. Klauser was announced as state chair for Thompson's presidential campaign. But it's not like Thompson is really going to register on the national map. This gig appears to be an excuse to jet around the country on somebody else's dime while seeing his name in small print as an also-ran.

Positive Job Market: Looking for a door-to-door seller's permit, but worried a shady criminal record might put the brakes on that job opportunity? Well, then, head to St. Francis, where it seems anything goes when getting a city license to peddle. The Common Council approved two sellers' permits-one to a convicted felon and another to a three-time misdemeanor offender-in a contentious vote earlier last month. The two -- Eaamon Fields and Shaun Dougherty -- applied for permits to go door-to-door in St. Francis selling Time Warner cable services. If the duo had applied in Milwaukee, they would still be looking for a new career, as aldermen in the big city take offense to such criminal records when issuing permits.

Fields, 29, enjoys habitual criminal status for offenses ranging from felony reckless use of a dangerous weapon to intimidating victims and obstructing and resisting officers. Dougherty, 30, has three criminal convictions for resisting and obstructing officers. The St. Francis Common Council deadlocked on granting the permits until Mayor Al Richards broke the 3-3 tie.

Shop Talk: The new owners of Southridge Mall have already started their venture in the hole. Toronto-based property developer Brookfield Asset Management bought The Mills Corp., owners of Southridge and several other malls around the country, for $1.35 billion. At the same time, Leath Furniture, which occupies a behemoth building in the Southridge parking lot, announced it was bailing out of the Milwaukee market after three years. Leath showed up here in 2003 with expectations of several stores in the metro area, but the Atlanta-based chain settled on one. The soon-to-be vacant monster building could leave Greendale village fathers with the prospects of condemning yet another part of the mall, which it did when Younkers moved out in 2000, leaving the south end of the mall a linoleum wasteland for nearly five years. Part of the Younkers' space is still vacant, attested to by the rusting green roof adorning the south side of the mall. With mall talk in the area centered on expansion, remodeling and building anew, Southridge, the metro's largest mall, has a ways to go to get into the conversation.

Crowd Calming 101: One rather noticeable event in the video of the aftermath at the Bradley Tech and Bay View high school basketball game was the fact that it took almost three minutes after the ruckus started before anyone got on the public address system and told those in attendance to leave the building. After an authoritative voice made the announcement, the crowd at the Tech gym thinned rather rapidly, giving credence to the argument that voices from on high generally can calm the most unruly of crowds.