According to eyewitnesses, Olmert then demonstratively lit up a cigar, declaring that he was making the meeting room an official smoking room. Smoking in a non-smoking area is punishable by a $37 fine, doubled for a second offense.
Hoffman said that her complaint against Olmert for “using his powers to subvert the law,” bears a three-year prison sentence if he is convicted. She said that “in all cases in which a complaint is received by police against public officials, it goes to the police inspector-general and the attorney-general, where it is now being examined.”
City spokesman Hagai Elias said that the meeting room is part of Olmert’s office that “was declared a smoking room five years ago, and answers all the criteria required in the law.” Therefore, he said, Olmert “did not violate any law.”
However Dr. Alma Avni, director of occupational health in the Health Ministry, rejected Olmert’s claim that a meeting room containing non-smokers could legally be declared a “smoking room.”
Avni, the ministry’s expert in enforcing anti-smoking laws in the workplace, said that an individual’s personal office could be declared a smoking room only if non-smokers did not enter it. “A meeting room where non-smokers sit cannot, by law, be declared a smoking room,” she said.
Asked about enforcement of the law, which was signed by Ephraim Sneh, Olmert’s successor as health minister, Avni said that it was the job of Jerusalem municipal inspectors to fine Olmert, although she admitted this was “not likely.”
Elias said that at the first meeting in which Hoffman was present, the mayor did know she had been diagnosed with cancer.