The court is being asked to rule on whether local approval in this case includes the City Council.
A box of syringes at Tapestry Health's needle exchange site on Main Street in Holyoke recently.
HOLYOKE -- In a case of one department of city government suing another, a hearing will be held in Hampden Superior Court Wednesday on a request for an injunction to halt the operation of Holyoke's needle exchange program.
Lawyer John J. O'Neill, a former city councilor , is representing the City Council pro bono and asserting in a complaint filed Friday that Mayor Alex B. Morse overstepped his authority. Local approval to establish needle exchange required that the City Council vote on the measure, said O'Neill.
"This is the legislative branch of government exercising the power of government that only it is empowered to exercise," O'Neill said Monday.
The hearing on the injunction request is at 2 p.m. on the third floor of the Hall of Justice in Springfield, he said.
O'Neill's position about local approval is opposed by Morse and City Solicitor Elizabeth Rodriguez-Ross, who say that needle exchange was permitted here with the Board of Health's Aug. 14 approval and the subsequent signature of Morse, and that a City Council vote was unnecessary.
"Obviously, I think the City Council has better things to do than this. There's a lot of important issues they could be dealing with," Morse said.
Council President Kevin A. Jourdain, who led the drive to pursue court action, said he did so to protect the powers of the City Council in cases in which the law says the council is supposed to have authority.
"This has wide-ranging implications as to what local approval means in Massachusetts," Jourdain said.
The City Council has twice voted against needle exchange and voters in 2001 rejected needle exchange in a nonbinding referendum.
The city became only the fifth in the state to permit a needle exchange program since a 1993 law began allowing such facilities. Tapestry Health runs the program here at 15-A Main St.
In such a program, people visit an office and hand over used drug needles and get clean ones in return.
Doctors and other specialists such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization, said isolating the used needles is vital because the sharing of infected needles is largely to blame for spreading diseases for which there are no cures like HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C.
Others like Jourdain question the effectiveness of such an exchange in the face of the reputation they say it gives a city of being a welcoming spot for drug users.
Morse has questioned whether the City Council can have its own lawyer, given that the city charter permits only the city solicitor or his or her designee to represent the city in legal matters. O'Neill said the City Council has a right to legal representation when its authority has been violated.
The complaint seeks the injunction, a ruling on local approval and an order that the City Council be permitted to vote on needle exchange, O'Neill said.
In any case, Morse has said, the issue is one of public safety and not of politics, and needle exchange is step that can save lives.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the CIty Council and individual councilors Anthony Soto, Linda L. Vacon, Todd A. McGee, Brenna M. McGee, James M. Leahy, Joseph M. McGiverin, Daniel B. Bresnahan and Jourdain, Jourdain said.
The defendants in the lawsuit are the mayor, professionally, the Board of Health and Tapestry Health, Jourdain said.