Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990 TAG: 9003202771
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANNE MORROW DONLEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Virginia Group to Alleviate Smoking in Public is respected by many people and disliked by some for calling it like we see it. No "personal attacks" were made on the three legislators you defended, but I did point out their legislative actions and the results of those actions. Their personal integrity and legislative prowess is not at stake here. I stand amazed at a newspaper editor who refuses to allow others to hold legislators accountable. Citizen groups are effective only when they tell people, including the press, what's happening in government.
Several people, including GASP members, gathered on a Wednesday in February to be a part of a public hearing on Del. Bernard S. Cohen's Clean Indoor Air Act, and they anxiously anticipated a vote from the House General Laws Committee. The Senate had passed an identical bill by Sen. Thomas J. Michie Jr. Del. Alan Diamonstein, chairman, ruled that the vote on Cohen's bill would be postponed to the following Monday. Cohen said the delay would not allow time for the three required "readings" of the bill in the House before the deadline for the House to have finished its business. Diamonstein abruptly cut off Cohen's remarks.
GASP members flooded Diamonstein's office with calls demanding that the bill be voted on before Monday. Diamonstein, for whatever reason, changed his mind and allowed a vote on Saturday. The bill passed 13 to 6 in the same committee that had defeated it by one vote last year. Diamonstein, to his credit, not only voted for the bill, but against an unsuccessful amendment to limit the actions of localities.
The result of Diamonstein's first action, however, was that on Friday of that same week Del. C. Richard Cranwell's bill passed to the House floor from the House Counties, Cities and Towns Committee on which Cranwell serves. This put Cranwell's bill ahead of Cohen's bill in the voting process. And there's a neat little parliamentary rule that says the speaker of the House, A.L. Philpott, can refuse to have the House consider any bill that's similar to one the House has already acted upon. Nifty, huh? Therefore, Cohen made a bold move, and on the House floor substituted his bill for Cranwell's; this failed on a hand-raising vote of 40 to 57. Some delegates on the floor said they thought they were going to be able to vote for both bills, which would have made the vote even closer. So there was obviously far more support for Cohen's bill than your source admitted to you.
Cranwell's original one-sentence bill allowed a locality to enact no-smoking legislation wherever it chose to do so. Since Cranwell in 1989 had led the Counties, Cities and Towns Committee to pass the moratorium on local legislation, and since the moratorium would have ended this July 1, it required no leap of the imagination as to why Cranwell had introduced this one-sentence bill. Indeed, he admitted on the floor of the House on March 8 that he had entered it to act as damage control, because he didn't want to see the contribution of tobacco to Virginia forgotten in the legislative process. A spokesman for The Tobacco Institute was quoted on Feb. 18 in several newspapers as saying the Cranwell bill that eventually passed the House the first time "had been drafted at least in part by tobacco interests."
When Cranwell's bill entered the Senate, several senators were ready to change it into the real thing, the Cohen/Michie bill. Cranwell reportedly threatened to hold their bills hostage unless they agreed to support his bill only. That's when I wrote in a press release that "the self-elected Saviour of Health, His Majesty Cranwell, may not have the votes he needs without the added incentive of fear." (You spelled it wrong.) Richmond and Newport News newspaper reporters wrote articles about Cranwell's hostage-taking. Fortunately some legislators had the courage to refuse to be bullied. I suspect that Cranwell, renowned for his wheeling-dealing and his desire to be speaker of the House, was more amused than angered at my nickname for him. After all, legislators are accustomed to this sort of thing. They do it magnificently themselves.
Your editorial chastized me for implying that House Speaker Philpott was out to kill Cohen's bill, favoring the weaker one of Cranwell. May I correct you again. I did not imply it. I stated it. Philpott has been referred to by the tobacco industry (in Richmond newspapers) as someone who makes them feel "very comfortable" that he is there. Philpott, the record shows, voted for Cranwell's do-little bill, but voted against the final compromise bill hammered out by Michie, Cohen and Cranwell, and supported by almost everyone else in the House and Senate.
In the third public committee meeting on the Michie bill, Cranwell moved first to try to kill it, then changed it to his bill. He personally attacked Sen. Michie, accusing Michie of working on Cranwell's bill in the Senate committee when Cranwell was not there. This was a fascinating lapse of memory on Cranwell's part, since the press and others saw him hand a note to Chairman Elmon Gray, which the press reported told Gray to go ahead without him.
You primarily seemed upset that unnamed "other organizations" were "embarrassed by Donley's outbursts." Fortunately for Virginians there were some groups, including GASP, which did not vascillate with the vagaries of legislative winds, but held firm and urged their members to lobby heavily ONLY for the Michie/Cohen health concepts, NOT the Cranwell bill. It is that firmness of the citizens which helped the legislators in the final compromise bill to gain us many statewide measures.
By the way, Diamonstein received $1,700 for his re-election campaign from tobacco interests, Cranwell $1,300, Philpott $1,000, and Cohen received zero - though his opponents got about $1,000. Editors can argue about the effect of money on legislative actions. Hopefully the promise of approximately $2 million to the Roanoke area from the tobacco industry had nothing to do with your personal attack on me and Virginia GASP.
by CNB