Smoking Ban: How They Voted & What You Can Do!
Claude asked a good question in response to my last post on the Baltimore City Smoke Free Bill...where do the councilmembers stand???
I finally found the answer:
On Monday, February 12, the City Council advanced the proposed smoking ban via a second reader procedural vote. That puts the ban up for final approval Feb. 26.
Voting "yes": President Stephanie C. Rawlings Blake, Vice President Robert W. Curran, Kenneth N. Harris Sr., Rochelle "Rikki" Spector, Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., Mary Pat Clarke.
Voting "no" : James B. Kraft, Nicholas C. D'Adamo Jr., Bernard C. "Jack" Young.
Abstaining: Belinda Conaway, Helen L. Holton, Agnes Welch, Edward L. Reisinger, Paula Johnson Branch.
As mentioned previously, the Smoke Free Charm City Coalition and MaryPirg will be organizing this Saturday to get one more vote.
I learned that they are focusing their canvassing in two of the councilmanic districts where representatives abstained: District 13 (Councilwoman Branch) and District 8 (Councilwoman Holton).
They are also urging city residents who live in Districts 7, 9 and 10 to contact their own Councilperson: Conaway, Welch and Reisinger, respectively.
I will be calling my representative: Councilwoman Conaway and joining the canvassing on Saturday.
If you can't come out on Saturday, Smoke Free Charm City urges you to contact them to help make calls to their database of supporters from your home.
Contact: Johanna Neumann at MaryPIRG: 410-467-0439 or: Johanna [at] marylandpirg.org or Joe Adams: 410-812-1447 (Smoke Free MD), or Sherry McCammon (ACS): 410-933-5146
In summary:
Baltimore City residents can do one or all of the following:
(1)Contact your own City Councilman(via www.mdelect.net)
(2)Contact Mayor Sheila Dixon: phone: 410-396-3835; fax: 410-576-9425; mayor@baltimorecity.gov; and ask her to actively push this bill forward
(3)Use one of the following links:www.smokefree.net/baltimore; or www.acscan.org/maryland(and click on You Can Help Make Baltimore Smoke-free)
(4)Forward this to other City residents
(5)Contact Smoke Free Charm City or MaryPirg to help with canvassing and calling constituents
Baltimore City's Smoke-Free bill moves forward again!
Read the Feb 13, 2007 article in The Baltimore Sun
3 comments:
MPK was a cosponsor, i had emailed her on this one a while ago for my support. she is my city council person. depending on where you are in Hampden you might be represented by MPK or Belinda.
MPK is great. Belinda Conaway is my rep and unfortunately, she has said that she will not vote for it.
However, canvassing was really fun today and went really well. The majority of the people that I talked to were in favor of the ban. Hopefully, they will follow up on their promises to call their city councilmember.
I'm crossing my fingers for Monday's vote.
Yeah, it kinda figures that Ed Reisinger has abstained thus far, given that he—oops, I mean his wife—owns a bar.
On the other hand, he did chair a committee that studied the whole video gambling machine thing in the city, rationalizing that he could chair the meeting so long as he didn't participate in any votes. Feckin' hypocrite.
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