Why doesn't the council's Pro-Bloc face the public with its smoking ban reasoning?

It occurs to me that New Albany’s Greatly Unnecessary Smoking Debate of ’08 hasn’t been much of a debate at all, at least where the public is concerned.

When all is said and done, and if the city council stumbles through second and third readings of the ordinance next Thursday, all of it will have come down with precisely one -- one – (1) -- public meeting on the topic, and with public speaking/discussion sessions during only two actual council meetings.

As we know, council protocol for public speaking time limits citizens to five minutes. However, this being New Albany, the limit is rarely universally enforced. I’m betting that this coming Thursday, it will.

Apart from at-large councilman John Gonder, who contributed a comment to NAC on Thursday, the council's Pro-Bloc seems uninterested in public dialogue of any sort. We can only speculate as to why it has refrained from facing voters en masse in the way that fellow council members Steve Price, Jack Messer and Diane Benedetti did earlier in the week when explaining their opposition to the ban.

To be sure, irony abounds in 3rd district councilman Steve Price’s decision, at long last, to take an interest in a cause beyond his preferred hobby of voting against things for kicks.

Because Price long ago placed concrete shoes on the notion that he’ll ever give a damn about actually improving his neighborhood, virtually any cause will suffice as evidence of a pulse, and while smoking rights isn’t the noblest available, credit him with the chutzpah to go out, beat the bushes, and rally people to his flag. Price may not grasp the science involved, and in this, he’s far from alone. But he’s exposed his neck.

Here, strangely, the Siamese Councilmen finally part ways. While utterly clueless as to cause and effect, Price’s “freedom for the people” stance is fully consistent with his five-year-long regressive council nap. On the other hand, Dan Coffey’s flagrant hypocrisy, while mildly progressive in some obscure way, can’t be playing very well on the West Side with the nicotine-inspired voters he routinely patronizes.

Meanwhile, with precious little public input, the Pro-Bloc apparently has no plans to greet the people and defend their position, even if the occasional surreptitious cocktail party with our area’s professional health fascism lobby can’t be ruled out.

As I stated yesterday, color me not only skeptical, but contemptuous. When all this newly minted concern for public health coalesces into unified opposition to New Albany’s time-honored slumlord entitlement program, I’ll be a believer. When I see the health department, the drug task forces and Coffey passionately defending the right of the public to basic living standards, I’ll be a believer.

Until then, it’s a random spinning of the “we really care” wheel, and I’ve no choice except to muddy the scrum.