By Tom Dalton
SALEM — A city councilor's attempt to ban smoking in public housing was quickly extinguished last night.
Councilor Tom Furey wants the City Council to send a resolution to the state Legislature urging it to act, but the measure failed to get support from the Committee on Public Health and Safety, which met last night at City Hall.
While acknowledging Assistant City Solicitor Jerry Parisella's opinion that the City Council "lacks the jurisdiction to impose a smoking ban" in properties controlled by the Salem Housing Authority, Furey said he felt an obligation to protect public health and safety.
"We have to act," Furey said. "We have a moral responsibility. If not us, who? If not now, when?"
In response, Ward 7 Councilor Joe O'Keefe, citing Furey's attempts to impose other bans in the past, asked: "How can we as a City Council morally control all these things?"
Furey said he tried and failed to pass a similar resolution when he joined the City Council 16 years ago and attempted it again last night after reading that Mayor Tom Menino is pushing a smoking ban in Boston public housing.
Furey said it was "just a matter of time before we have a major loss of life ..."
There have been only one or two smoking-related fires in Salem public housing in the past 15 years or more, according to the Housing Authority and Fire Department.
Furey's plea failed to sway any of the three councilors present, and was opposed by several representatives of the SHA in the audience.
Maureen Fry, head of the SHA tenant's group, said a smoking ban was wrong and wouldn't be obeyed even if it was passed.
"People are going to smoke in their homes regardless if there's a regulation or not," she said. "I just think this is another Big Brother action ..."
SHA Chairman John Boris, a former smoker and cancer survivor, was also strongly against a ban.
"To tell people they can't smoke in their own homes goes beyond the realm of anything I'd consider personally," he said.
SHA Executive Director Carol MacGown said she had no idea how her staff would enforce such an action, and doubted they would be able to evict a tenant for "smoking in their own home."
Earlier, Furey said that living in taxpayer-supported public housing was "not a right and an entitlement, but a privilege and a responsibility."
Two councilors disagreed.
While calling smoking "unhealthy," Councilor Steve Pinto said he felt the City Council had no right to impose a ban on public housing residents. To ask someone 80 or 90, like his mother, a senior housing tenant and smoker, to go outside in the winter to smoke could cause other health problems, he said.
"I think (smoking in their apartments) is something they have a right, a basic right, to," he said.
Ward 6 Councilor Paul Prevey agreed that it was "within their legal rights."
Several people, citing Parisella's opinion, said that housing authorities are independent agencies not under the jurisdiction of local cities and towns.
"We'd probably end up with a lawsuit from the ACLU or something," SHA board member Frank Milo said.
