US CITIES TAKE NOTE OF ST. LOUIS BID TO RECOUP SMOKING-RELATED LOSSES

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Tobacco companies may soon be girding for new foes in
the battle to get them to pay the costs of treating sick smokers.

Many American cities, disturbed at their perceived exclusion from state
governments' multibillion-dollar settlement with cigarette makers, appear
ready to open new legal fights to recoup their own costs of treating
smoking-related illness.

That could change after a hearing Thursday in St. Louis, when that city and
a group of Missouri hospitals will try to persuade a judge that the
agreement wrongly prevents local governments from seeking damages.

Other cities, including Kansas City and New York City, have said they are
watching the case.

Just as states have, city and county governments have spent much money to
treat the results of nicotine addiction and disease.

But the $206 billion agreement reached with 46 states last month left ''no
financial mechanism for cities to recover their costs,'' said Kristin
Cormier, legislative counsel for the National League of Cities, an $11
million lobbying group. (Four states reached separate deals with tobacco
companies worth a total of $40 billion.)

At its national conference here this month, the National League of Cities
passed a resolution supporting efforts to include money for local
governments in any tobacco settlements.

The National Association of Public Hospitals, representing more than 100
publicly run medical centers, or about 10 percent of those in the nation,
estimates its members alone have spent about $800 million in uncompensated
costs related to smoking.

At Thursday's court hearing, the city of St. Louis, along with a coalition
of 53 hospitals across Missouri, is expected to argue that Attorney General
Jay Nixon wrongly negotiated away the power of cities and counties to
recover their costs.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski