Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

H.C. Smith smokes a cigarette Thursday at the Village Grill in Roanoke. The House is due to vote on smoking in restaurants.

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RICHMOND -- Leading state lawmakers breathed new life into an idea that over the past three years has gotten lots of publicity but little legislative traction -- a statewide ban on smoking in restaurants.

Gov. Tim Kaine, House Speaker Bill Howell and nearly a dozen Democrats and Republicans from both chambers of the General Assembly announced Thursday they have agreed on a compromise bill that would ban smoking in state restaurants. The bill makes exceptions for private clubs and restaurants that have separately ventilated smoking rooms.

"I feel comfortable the rights of citizens to enjoy a legal product have been protected, and the rights of citizens who don't want to have secondhand smoke when they're having their dinner have been protected as well," said Howell, R-Stafford County.

The bill was approved later in the day by the House General Laws Committee on a 16-6 vote. It now goes to the full House for consideration.

The compromise and vote marks a drastic change in the House's stance on smoking bans. Since 2006 a House subcommittee has ensured that smoking ban legislation didn't make it to the full general laws committee, much less the entire House.

But with all 100 House seats up for election in November and some polls showing 75 percent of Virginians support bans, it makes political sense for the House's Republican leadership to shift its position on the issue -- even if Howell answered with a sarcastic "no" when asked if political considerations factored into the compromise.

"They want it off the table for the '09 elections," said former Sen. Brandon Bell, who in 2006 became the first legislator to shepherd a smoking ban through the Virginia Senate. That bill was killed in a House subcommittee, as was a similar Bell bill the next year.

After Bell's defeat in a 2007 Republican primary, other legislators picked up the torch but their bills met the same fate.

The one exception was in 2007, when the House passed a measure that would require restaurants to post signs if they allowed smoking.

Kaine amended the bill so that it became an outright ban on smoking in restaurants, then sent it back to the General Assembly for an up-or-down vote in the veto session. The House defeated the measure 59-40.

But the makeup of the House has changed somewhat since then and -- perhaps more importantly -- key members of the House Republican leadership who voted against the 2007 bill stood behind the governor during Thursday's news conference.

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, and House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong, D-Henry County, were both conspicuously absent. Each man said he has yet to make up his mind on the compromise, but will give it consideration.

The committee debate did raise some possible issues the bill may yet encounter. During nearly 50 minutes of public input, restaurant representatives as well as advocates for smoke-free legislation argued against the compromise measure.

A smoking ban "is a business issue. It is neither a social nor a health issue," said Megan Svajda, spokeswoman for the Virginia Restaurant Association. "When the government starts to mandate what a business is allowed and not allowed to do, the government has overstepped its boundaries and you then have to start to question, what will the government mandate next?"

Other business representatives said the exemption for separate smoking rooms will give larger, well-monied restaurants an unfair advantage over smaller, less-lucrative operations.

Cathleen Grzesiek of the American Heart Association expressed concern that the bill was drawn too broadly and has loopholes that restaurants will use to continue to allow smoking. Representatives of the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society shared many of the same worries.

Del. Dave Albo, R-Fairfax County, said some of the comments were "constructive" and helped write several amendments to tighten the bill. But he said some of the criticism -- particularly from those in favor of a smoking ban -- was unexpected.

"I'm a little bit shocked that some people are getting a new car and now they're complaining about the color," Albo said.

Albo, like compromise bill sponsor Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, voted against Kaine's smoking ban in 2007 but for the bill on Thursday. But other committee members such as Del. William Fralin, R-Roanoke, and Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, maintained their opposition, largely on the grounds that government should not interfere with a free market that is largely moving toward smoke-free restaurants anyway.

"I fear this is nothing more than the nanny state mothering us yet again for our own protection," Gilbert said. "This bill sets a very bad precedent for the free market and for private property rights in general."

Staff writer Michael Sluss contributed to this story.