Mayor Alex Morse said needle exchange saves lives, but council president Kevin Jourdain said it could create a haven for drug addicts.
Left to right, Alex Morse and Kevin JourdainHOLYOKE — City Council President Kevin A. Jourdain and Mayor Alex B. Morse are clashing over approvals needed to establish a needle exchange program.
City Solicitor Elizabeth Rodriguez-Ross issued an opinion last week that said City Council approval is unnecessary to establish a needle exchange program.
The local approvals needed to begin such a program were a vote from the Board of Health and the mayor’s signature, she said, and those approvals came on July 9.
Tapestry Health has begun offering needle exchange at its office at 15-A Main St.
Jourdain, a needle exchange foe since it became an issue in the mid-1990s, protested the program’s establishment because it happened without City Council approval and requested the legal opinion Rodriguez-Ross delivered July 26.
“It is my opinion that the well-established principles of statutory construction support the conclusion that ‘local approval’ within the meaning of (state law) does not require the approval of the City Council,” Rodriguez-Ross said.
In needle exchange, people submit used intravenous drug needles and get clean needles in return. The goal is to reduce the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C, diseases for which there are no cures and which can be spread through the sharing of infected needles.
Jourdain said Friday he would seek a court injunction to stop the needle exchange program. That discussion will happen at the Aug. 7 council meeting, said Jourdain, a lawyer.
Local approval clearly includes the City Council, he said, contrary to Rodriguez-Ross’ opinion.
“We have just as much authority (as the mayor). We’re 50 percent of the equation,” Jourdain said.
Morse and Rodriguez-Ross have ignored previous City Council votes against needle exchange, as well as voters rejecting such a program in a nonbinding referendum in 2001, said Jourdain, who criticized Morse.
“What the mayor is trying to do is create an emperorship over the city. ... This is what happens when you have a mayor focused on a radical agenda and not transparency,” said Jourdain, a councilor since 1994.
“I am going to defend my constituents. This is exactly why I became a city councilor, to make sure a mayor doesn’t go and do whatever he wants,” he said.
Morse replied, “I wish Kevin Jourdain would move beyond needle exchange and focus on more pressing issues. My ‘radical agenda’ is better schools, more business and safer neighborhoods.”
The key about needle exchange is that it saves lives, he said.
“This is not about politics, this is about public health,” Morse said.
As Rodriguez-Ross notes, Morse said, local approval on needle exchange here mirrored the state-approved, mayor/Board of Health process followed by Northampton in 1995.
Regarding Jourdain’s comment that Rodriguez-Ross writes opinions to suit the mayor’s decisions, Morse said that was untrue. The July 26 opinion was a clarification requested by Jourdain of a previously issued Law Department opinion on needle exchange, Morse said.
Jourdain said allowing needle exchange risks making the city a haven for drug addicts who know they can get needles to shoot up heroin.
The significant opinion, Jourdain said, is a July 1996 decision from the city Law Department. Former City Solicitor Daniel M. Glanville said in that opinion local approval of a needle exchange program means approval from the mayor and City Council, not the Board of Health.
Rodriguez-Ross said her office regards highly the opinions of previous solicitors. But Glanville’s opinion was written when needle exchange in the state was in its “infancy,” she said, and her research and interpretation of the meaning of “local approval” differs from Glanville’s.
Rodriguez-Ross said a City Council vote to have the Law Department seek a court injunction would present a challenge since her opinion as head of the department is clear that needle exchange was properly established.
Jourdain said Rodriguez-Ross could be asked to designate a lawyer on her staff to handle a council pursuit of an injunction to halt needle exchange or an appropriation could be sought for the council to hire outside counsel.
Jourdain and Rodriguez-Ross agreed the situation was uncharted territory.