Posted on 09/04/2003 11:38:00 AM PDT by Just another Joe
The bolding of certain comments is mine. JaJ
Moments before the Maine House of Representatives voted on a bill that outlawed smoking in bars and pool halls, state Rep. John Eder told lawmakers about Charles Greer.
Eder, a Green Party member who represents a piece of Portland, said Greer was an Old Orchard Beach teacher so beloved that classes were canceled the day of his funeral. He said Greer “was very dear to the students whose lives he had touched.”
And he said Greer moonlighted for 20 years in a Portland tavern.
“The cautionary tale here,” Eder told fellow lawmakers last June 3, “is that (Greer), who did not smoke, but worked in this bar for 20 years, was exposed to secondhand smoke and died of lung cancer ... I thought it was a story that should be told.”
But according to his friends and family, Greer was nearly a lifelong smoker.
“He smoked for years and had quit five or six years before he died,” Thomas Greer, Charles’ brother, said. “His comment to me was that he quit smoking, but not soon enough.”
“We all smoked,” said Kathleen Donnellon, a Hollis resident who taught alongside Greer, “and we smoked like chimneys.”
Some representatives credit the mention of Greer, which was brought to the Legislature as a “special sentiment” used by lawmakers to honor noteworthy Mainers, with smoothing the passage of “An Act to Protect Workers From Secondhand Smoke and Promote Workplace Safety,” the bill that extends the restaurant smoking ban.
The measure, LD 1346, passed in the House with no argument and made Maine the fifth state to ban smoking in bars, after California, Delaware, New York, and Connecticut. It goes into effect Jan. 1.
David Lamoine, a Democrat from Old Orchard Beach, said Eder’s comments drove home the need for the smoking ban in a personal way that statistics couldn’t, quieting the opposition.
Eder, in a recent interview, said supporters of the bill congratulated him after the vote, and an opponent told him he planned to speak against the bill — but didn’t because of his comments.
Eder said “it made my jaw drop” that nobody spoke in opposition to the bill. He said he received all his knowledge about Greer from a trusted constituent who asked him to honor the teacher’s impact. He learned later that his remarks were inaccurate.
“That was news to me at that point,” he said.
Other lawmakers, noting that the measure passed overwhelmingly, doubted the effect of Eder’s words. Some said they didn’t remember hearing the special sentiment, while others said they came to the Statehouse that day with their minds already firm on the anti-smoking bill.
“I needed no persuasion,” said state Rep. Thomas Murphy, a Republican from Kennebunk who supported the ban.
But some opponents of the smoking measure say the Legislature was misled by Eder’s comments — and they question the timing of the special sentiment.
The Legislature, Donnellon said, “was sold a bill of goods.”
John Michael, a maverick former lawmaker from Auburn now gathering signatures to overturn the smoking ban, claims the timing of Eder’s special sentiment shows how political parties work the legislative process to get the results they desire.
“They’re just a bunch of manipulative little dogs,” Michael, an independent, said. “The leadership has control of the calendar. They have control of what comes up when.”
Robert Daigle, a Republican lawmaker from Arundel, agreed the Democrats who control the House leadership govern the agenda — and said the scheduling is often politically motivated. That’s the way it works, he said, no matter which party is in power.
“It’s all scripted,” Daigle said. “It’s all intentional.”
But Douglas Rooks, spokesman for Speaker of the House Patrick Colwell, D-Gardiner, said it was “entirely coincidental” that Eder’s special sentiment came before the vote on the smoking ban.
And Rooks said the speaker regrets that inaccurate information was presented to lawmakers.
“We’re concerned whenever there is a misrepresentation,” he said. “We expect members to represent the facts accurately, but we have no way of enforcing that.”
Eder said he requested that his measure honoring Greer come on the same day as the smoking ban vote, but was pleasantly surprised that it came up immediately beforehand.
“I wanted it to be as fresh in the mind of folks as it could be,” Eder said, (but) that was sort of a quirk of fate.”
The Portland representative doesn’t believe lawmakers were misled by his comments — nor does he think that he significantly altered the outcome of the smoking ban vote.
“To be honest, I don’t think my little effort to put the two together had much effect,” he said. “I’d like to think that the floor leader of the Green Party would have that kind of influence, but I don’t.”
Eder says that while the specifics about the revered high school teacher may have been inaccurate, his comments speak to a larger truth about the dangers of secondhand smoke.
“It doesn’t change my view that environmental smoke in the workplace, after 15 years of exposure, can cause someone to come down with lung cancer,” he said. “There are other people out there who have come down with cancer from working in bars.”
Hey Lock!!!!
Here is the following letter I received last week. I wrote to the Guv about this ban. Partnership for a Tobacco Free Maine working under the Human Services no less, sent me the following letter. What a bunch of chit! (I know it's dated 26th of August, but they finally sent it out to me last week).
SheLion - do you have a chapter of Common Cause in Maine? They might just be interested in looking into this blatant misuse of taxpayer money. And misuse of government supplies and manpower.
Hey Gabz!
You know what, right off the top of my head at this very moment, I have NO idea. Where would I look for something like this?
I doubt if it would help though, since they are all in this together. From the Governor on down..........
What kind of help can you offer me?
I have had run in's with Guv Baldacci for the past 10 years, when he was a Senator. He HATES smokers. But once I got "smart about the facts" he doesn't have the balls to write to me anymore. He has his POSSE do it for him. The chicken ball-less chicken chit. Gawd, how I hate that puny jerk. I do believe he and Gray Davis are related! PUKE!
This from the people who want to ban dihydrogen monoxide.
Lock? I have it posted at Forces Maine about Partnership For A Tobacco Free Maine using the Maine smokers TAX dollars to sponsor RACE TRACKS AND RACE TEAMS across the state of Maine! This Guv is ALL FOR IT! Talk about a huge waste of money.
And Maine's budget is almost as big as Kookifornia, and yet instead of using this money for health care for the uninsured and for health care for kids, they are putting that money into RACE TRACKS? You talk about being irate! I certainly am!
If you and Human Services and Partnership for a Tobacco Free Maine are SO against adults who choose to smoke, (and also who feed billions of dollars into the state coffers with OUR tax money), why don't you just BAN it? Pull it off the shelves and be done with it!
I would really like an answer to this. If you are telling us that tobacco is such a killer, then BAN it! Take it off the market. Then you will have to go after some other poor suckers and dig into THEIR wallets for your money.
Too bad you don't devote more time to teen drinking and driving. Maine is losing a lot of youth because they end up in twisted pieces of metal from being drunk or on drugs.
There are plenty of us in Maine that are really fed up with your group and the miss-use of our tax dollars that you use against us just because we choose to smoke a LEGAL product.
Go ahead. BAN it! Then you and the Governor will have to balance the budget on someone ELSE'S shoulders!
DL Brennan
Caribou
I will post any reply that I should get. But we ALL know it will be more propaganda, don't we?!
LOCK! I would be in a FIST FIGHT every day, working with those idiots in the state house!
She's more of a General (Five Star).
How sweet, Madame Dufarge. You make me blush.
Actually, I'm too MEAN to be in polictics. I would be in a fist fight every day being around those idiots. And you know it's true. hehe!
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