Virginia animal rescuers fight to repeal new licensing law
Coming soon in your state?
By Walt and Sharyn Hutchins
In the January 2002 session, the Virginia legislature passed a law defining
volunteer home animal rescuers accepting more than six animals per year as Companion
Animal Rescue Agencies and subjecting them to state inspections and requirements.
The State Veterinarian may inspect CARAs ‘at any reasonable time’
just because he wants to, with no warrant required. As a CARA, we are required
to:
- Register with the state veterinarian and pay a fee – $100 is likely.
- Post our addresses and telephone numbers in pounds in the localities we
serve.
- Have a listing as a rescue in a telephone book.
- Make our premises ‘accessible to the public at reasonable hours.’
- Make our records available to the public on request.
Animal rescuers don’t work that way. We require an approved written application,
check references, do a phone interview and often a home visit before we would
ever give out our home addresses and many do not do so even then. Rescuers are
nearly all women and about half of us live alone. We have big problems with
the new requirements.
You might think that in exchange, there’d at least be a requirement that
pounds and shelters work with us, but nope – they “may” transfer
an animal to a CARA but there’s no requirement that they do so. You might
think that such an intrusive law would have passed only after a battle, but
– wrong again. It passed all committees and both houses without an opposing
vote.
Rescuers were blind-sided. In the past we have been regulated only as other
animal owners are, so we weren’t watching the legislature. The Virginia
Federation of Humane Societies (a ‘program’ of the Humane Society
of the US) just told everyone that they had consulted rescuers and that we favored
the bill. Our state’s coalition of dog breeders and activity clubs should
logically have opposed SB 260 (breeders will be the next target), but their
legislative liaison had been doing her own thing as a friend of the VFHS lobbyist
for years. She said it was okay, so the coalition did not oppose the bill and
even told the American Kennel Club that it was okay. Rescuers heard of the bill
as it cleared the senate, but a petition with nearly a thousand signatures failed
to convince Governor Warner not to sign and SB 260 became law on April 8, 2002.
In mid-May, we established an e-mail list to coordinate opposition to the
law and a web site that became active in mid-June at www.no-sb-260.com
The website has the law (and analyses of it), stories from rescuers, suggestions
for what to do to fight, ways to send money to help with expenses, press coverage,
an explanation of what rescue is ... much more. There’s a tab with suggestions
for how out-of- state folks can help us ... hint hint!
We focused on writing letters. Legislators and other officials take them more
seriously than anything other than a personal visit, and you have to get them
to agree before you can make a visit.
We were starting in the worst possible situation. Not only had the law passed
without opposition but it was to take effect on July 1, and the state veterinarian
was telling us to register immediately. The law, however, said registration
was to run from January 1 each year. Lawyers we consulted informally agreed
that the state veterinarian didn’t have the power to change that.
We wrote letters to the governor saying “They can’t do that –
have the attorney general look at the law and tell them to stop.” A representative
in the state veterinarian’s office said “Stop bothering the governor
– he’s just sending your letters over to us to answer.”
That really made us mad. Rescuers wrote and faxed the governor: “This
is a policy decision – your policy. That’s not something you ought
to give to the state vet.” A couple of days later, we learned that the
question had been handed to the attorney general and that the mailing of forms
for registration was “Um... temporarily on hold, because, ah, we want to
get some questions answered by the attorney general.”
Progress
Four days after that, we learned that registration would begin January 1, 2003,
per the law and that no fee would be charged until implementing regulations
were written and approved – a process expected to take a year or more.
A small victory. We took an official break for an ice cream cone and then
went back to work on letters to legislators. We
- described the personal dangers
- told them the law would not help stray animals get home (one of the arguments
advanced by promoters)
- that it was useless, sloppy law writing, and substantially unconstitutional
and
- pointed out that rescues were folding or cutting back their numbers to stay
within the limit for an unregistered rescue.
It’s bad enough for an independent dog rescuer to cut from 12 to six,
but our state’s largest ferret rescuer will be down from 165 animals saved
per year to six. One rescuer’s husband is in the Navy; he was able to obtain
orders to another state to prevent their having to give up rescue. Many regional
and national rescue organizations simply couldn’t figure out how to comply
with the law, so they deactivated their Virginia branches.
Legislators respond...
We got a few answers to our letters.
From the law’s hapless sponsor, “We did not intend this law to apply
to rescuers that don’t accept strays” or (sometimes) “to home
animal rescuers.”
From many legislators “The law passed without opposition. I suggest you
discuss your concerns with the VFHS lobbyist as she may want to suggest an amendment.”
Yeah, right – the fox will definitely have a solution to problems in the
henhouse.
And “Talk to the bill’s sponsor – I could support any changes
he feels are necessary.”
And a personal favorite: “We’ll be monitoring the impact of the
law and will consider any changes that might be needed.” (So, senator ...
if the number of violent felonies committed against rescuers forced to disclose
premises addresses is excessive, you might consider changes?)
We got some press coverage, and scattered opinion pieces and letters to the
editor were published. Legislators still weren’t listening, as evidenced
by the fact that our own senator’s aide told me he wouldn’t meet with
us. “Put your concerns in writing and Senator X will check the folder for
SB 260 in the fall, when considering what changes he might support.”
More letters from our side
At the end of July, we wrote what was basically a ‘flame’ to all
the legislators. This letter was posted on the website at www.no-sb-260.com/729letter.html
As the e-mail list members and others continued to write letters, some got
return phone calls, and a few got meetings with lawmakers. The various committee
chairmen responsible for the mess talked to the VFHS representative, and we
heard of various possible changes. Then we were told that since much of the
law conflicted with other Virginia laws, we didn’t have to worry about
the details. Now there’s a great legal theory.
We are pushing now for the law to be repealed in a special session of the
legislature. Everyone says we won’t get it, but everyone also knows that
if one rescuer too many complies with the law and gets badly hurt or worse,
the special session will happen within days. We’re trying to get them to
do it now, rather than after the headlines. The ‘all legislators’
letter is on the website at www.no-sb-260.com/822letter.html. It was mailed
with two pages of rescuer horror stories about the results of people finding
their premises addresses (dogs dumped, killed, gates opened, threats ...) and
a two page narrative of a “sample” dog rescue.
We learned...
-
Virginia’s SB 260 is one of the many tentacles of HSUS anti-pet activity.
Three states – Colorado, Missouri, and Kansas – already had rescuer
registration laws. Animal rescuers in other states need to watch their legislatures
for laws like these because it is a hundred times easier to prevent a law
from being passed than to get it repealed.
-
Rescuers aren’t the only people who need to worry about SB 260; breeders
could easily be next. Reputable breeders guarantee to take back their own
animals forever. Once there’s a rescuer data base in shelters, wouldn’t
it be ‘logical’ to have a breeder database? Purely voluntary,
of course. Then in a couple more years, it might need to be made mandatory,
because of, you know, the “exploding pet overpopulation problem.”
(I assume that all readers know that there is no such problem ... but that
doesn’t stop anti-pet groups from using the argument.) Then add some
fees and a few regulations, “so the people who are creating the problem
can help pay for the solution.”
A word to the wise breeder: If rescuers are registered, we’ll be too
intimidated to help when it’s your turn.
-
Educating your own people is more than half the game. Fight the urge to
disallow viewpoints you don’t like or consider stupid – people
need to see everything discussed.
For every three people on an e-mail list who loudly hold onto a foolish idea
until it drags them under, 20 others are listening silently and changing their
minds. They are the ones the discussion is for. Next week the three will continue
their preferred action – doing nothing – and one of the 20 will
send a helpful letter to all legislators.
-
Don’t expect to be very favorably impressed with state government.
There are a handful of true gems, a bunch more who want to do the right
thing if they’re shown what it is and it’s not too hard, a great
number who are just serving time or punching a ticket for higher office
and another bunch who are corrupt, don’t care, incompetent, evil, or
some combination. Don’t waste time getting upset – work with anyone
you think might help and get on with the job.
-
Don’t think the crew of the HSUS ‘mothership’ is 10 feet
tall. Call it Walt’s law: When you require your top players to be fruitcakes,
you mostly don’t get the sharpest bunch of knives.
A second big weakness of the other side is pervasive lying – people
do figure that stuff out and they don’t like it. (Corollary: your side
must be very careful with facts so legislators can tell the difference.)
Another weakness is that most of the people doing the work of the animal
rights side either don’t understand or don’t support the whole program.
Fight the program but don’t declare all animal rights-leaning players
to be enemies.
In the SB 260 campaign we estimate that no more than 10 people fully understand
and support the law. The others want it for non-animal rights reasons, i.e.shelters
that feel they compete with rescuers, officials who want to silence whistle
blowing rescuers. Some supporters may buy fake reasons such as helping strays
get home or controlling animal hoarders; others may be members of supporting
organizations but do not personally believe in the law.
- Don’t get bogged down in details. To stop or change a law you must:
(a) understand it from end to end; (b) bury legislators in letters and media
coverage making it clear that voters don’t like the law; (c) tell them
exactly what you want, and why; and (d) repeat b and c until the problem is
fixed. There are various ways to organize and do all that. Each has advantages
but none is always ‘best.’ As long as ‘the herd is moving west’,
you are doing okay.
The final chapters of the SB 260 story will have to be written after the General
Assembly acts. Hopefully that will be soon, but we will never give up while
this law is above ground.
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