"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned/Nor hell a disingenuousness like Jeff Gahan scorned."

It wasn’t the substance of what happened at last evening’s council meeting that was strange or unexpected. Rather, in the aftermath of Tuesday’s smoking ordinance veto by Mayor Doug England, it was the choreography that made little sense to me.

(Gee, if only I could be elected, and then become eligible to understand – and comment on the proceedings.)

Certain of the maneuvers were seemingly preordained. I predicted in advance of the meeting, and afterward gleefully detailed, another in a series of shameless Dan Coffey caterwauls seemingly dating back to New Albany’s founding by the Scribner Brothers.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and Coffey gotta grandstand – nothing unusual there, and it’s just another reason for the outside world to laugh hard and long at any municipality or personage willing to tolerate such raging mediocrity on the part of an elected representative.

All of which brings us to the confusing segment of the program.

The late, unlamented smoking ordinance had five council backers. Correct me it I'm mistaken, but by my count, John Gonder’s and Bob Caesar’s motives were sincere and genuinely reflective of strong personal beliefs. Pat McLaughlin was and remains an unknown quantity on this and numerous other issues, and served as the pro-bloc’s Blevins Memorial Swing Vote in the absence of discernable substance.

President Jeff Gahan and Coffey may or may not have had coherent views as to the science prefacing the alleged harmfulness of second hand smoke to captive workers – go ahead an give ‘em a shard of the benefit of the doubt – but there is absolutely no doubt that the two, now ensconced in an open anti-England loving embrace that verges on the pornographic, were perfectly willing to wield the smoking ordinance like a vengeful scimitar aimed at the mayor’s electoral chest.

That sort of behavior constitutes transparently partisan politics, and accordingly, New Albany’s summertime smoking debate careened off the scientific rails and was transformed into tactless political posturing for an otherwise slow news month.

With a sparse crowd of 15 looking on, and looking at the clock in hopes that cocktail hour would soon blessedly arrive, Gahan waited until the “ordinances and resolutions” portion of last evening’s program to broach the topic of the mayor’s veto, and in doing so, matters were comprehensible – at first. The C-J’s Dick Kaukas quotes Gahan as saying, "We have accepted the mayor's veto as final."

There was a shuffling of papers, and (I believe) brief comments from deputy mayor Carl Malysz pertaining to the three revisions to the ordinance being sought by the mayor and how these might be incorporated into future smoking legislation, and at this juncture, Gahan gave every indication that while he understood the finality of the veto, he had no knowledge whatsoever of the mayor’s proposed exceptions.

It bears noting that these three exceptions, which were the very conceptual basis of the mayor’s veto, had for two days been highlighted in newspaper reports, on Louisville television, and in the local blogosphere, and yet, watching the council president fumble with his papers, it seemed either that he didn’t know or was performing an obscure set piece for the benefit of … whom?

Jamey Aebersold? Tim Filler? Yul Brynner?

Gahan announced that the council would come back to this startling (new?) development after concluding the Riverboat Fund backpedal of a fiscal rectitude gospel show, and so he did, and the performance became even more oblique.

Having drawn out the cognitive process to maximum possible effect, Gahan concluded aloud that further research was necessary, and he appointed a spanking new committee to examine the mayor’s press release for typos, invisible ink and, presumably, loopholes. Kaukas describes the scene:

Gahan named Councilmen Dan Coffey, Bob Caesar and Patrick McLaughlin to the committee. That drew an immediate objection from Councilwoman Diane Benedetti, who had voted against the ordinance.

Benedetti noted that all three members Gahan appointed had voted in favor of the smoking ban.

In fact, Benedetti turned toward Gahan and said, “I think there should be” someone else on the committee from the anti-ban bloc, and the council president’s response to her:

“You’re wrong.”

Oooh …face!

In essence, Gahan upheld his right to appoint as he sees fit, and whether or not it makes sense. As a direct result, the city now has an anti-development crusader (Coffey) sitting on the Redevelopment Commission, a pro-decay advocate (Steve Price) on the board of the Urban Enterprise Association, and as pertains to a possible future smoking ordinance, three pro-ban councilmen on a committee to ponder the topic.

One of these three is not John Gonder, who presumably is being censured for being the only sitting council member willing to engage in reasoned discussion of the smoking ordinance on the blogosphere – for that matter, reasoned discussion about it anywhere at all. Indeed, no good deed goes unpunished when it comes to politics over progress ... and in that sordid game, we're seeing little improvement over the waning months of King Larry's reign of error.

My take? Thanks for asking.

If Gahan’s confusion over the mayor’s smoking ban exceptions was genuine, and he truly failed to digest the implications of it during the 48+ post-veto ceremony hours accorded him, then he’s confessing to unpreparedness – and that isn’t something I’d be bragging about in public.

On the other hand, if he did digest it, and last night’s cat ‘n’ mouse thespian routine was mere prelude to the predetermined goal of appointing a bizarrely biased committee to review the mayor’s proposals, then he’s guilty of disingenuousness.

Either way, what continues to evolve is strategy whereby the council president has elevated the importance of strategic opaqueness to a position far that of the city’s best interests. When your deputy sheriff is Dan Coffey, that's scary business, indeed.

A bit of advice to the new committee: Check with the Indiana Alcohol & Tobacco Commission as to the state’s legal definition of a bar. It just might help you avoid more embarrassment than already exists owing to the biased methodology of the committee’s founding. Neither the city council's nor the mayor's definitions trump that of Indiana's most powerful regulatory agency.