HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0022.077 2004-2006 Murashige, Laura
From: kccc@i I hawaii. net
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 8:53 PM
To: counciltestimony@co.hawaii.hi.us
Subject: Subject: Animal Legislation
Council Members:
As you consider the issue of licensing cats, it may be worth reviewing
some "factual" information provided by the following POSITION STATEMENT
of San Francisco's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals. This
is a nationally recognized organization that stands in the forefront of
the movement to protect animals from the cruelty (both intentional and
unintentional)of we humans. Sometimes that cruelty is the unintentioned
result of well intentioned legislators who are not actually experts in
animal behavior but who believe they are intelligently dealing with a
public "issue".
Please review their analysis of cat licensing before proceeding down an
uninformed or misinformed path related to this issue.
Michael Galvin
Cat and Dog Owner
San Francisco SPCA Position Statement
Cat Licensing: Analysis of Claims
CLAIM: Cat Licensing will make cat owners mere responsible.
Caring can't be mandated, and a licensing mandate will only end up
punishing those who care. There are millions of compassionate people who
provide abandoned cats with food, love, and shelter in their own homes.
Others put aside their own needs in order to care for a beloved pet or
make sure a shy and reclusive neighborhood cat has daily sustenance and
medical attention. Still others work tirelessly to feed foster and
rehabilitate feral cats and kittens, all at their own personal expense.
For every one of these caregivers, mandatory cat licensing will exact a
heavy toll. These people will either have to pay the license fees - or
face citations, fines, penalties, and possible confiscation of the animals
they love. These new burdens, inflicted on the very people who are doing
the most to help cats in their communities, will force many to stop caring
for these animals, or at least force them to care for fewer cats, with the
net result being more cats left to tend for themselves and fewer people
able to provide them with any kind of safety net at all.
In response to these concerns, some cat licensing proponents have said
that enforcement won't be stressed, or will only be "complaint driven." In
our view, passing laws that aren't enforced or are enforced sporadically
is just as unfair and counterproductive: Few people are likely to comply
with a cat licensing mandate that isn't enforced. (In Los Angeles, for
instance, compliance rates of less than 1 % were reported, in spite of a
canvassing program.) And people who "voluntarily" comply can probably be
counted among the most responsible (and affl~~ent} pet owners in the
community. We see little equity or sense in enacting a law that only ends
up penalizing through a licensing tax the very people whose behavior is
already exemplary.
Needless to say, truly irresponsible cat owners won't be affected. If the n
law isn't enforced, they are free to ignore it. If it is enforced against Comm. No.
them, they are likely to surrender or abandon their animals, which will Ref. To:
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only add to the number of cats killed.
CLAIM: Cat Licensing will help raise the status of cats.
In our view this claim is on a par with the suggesting that licensing poor
people or the homeless will help raise their "status." Of course, cat
licensing proponents aren't making a comparison to people, but to dogs: if
cats are licensed like dogs they will apparently enjoy the same "status"
as dogs. Unfortunately, dog licensing didn't confer any beneficial
"status" on canines: it was and is a tool for protecting livestock,
enforcing rabies laws, and ridding the public streets of the perceived
threat posed by unowned, free-roaming dogs. Indeed, since 1933 California
dog licensing laws have explicitly authorized the impoundment of
unlicensed dogs, and millions of dogs have been impounded and killed by
animal control agencies throughout the state as a result of these
mandatory licensing laws.
This is the precedent to which proponents of cat licensing appeal when
they claim that licensing will raise the "status" of cats. We doubt,
however, whether cats would choose such a status for themselves. They
might well prefer to retain the unlicensed status they now share with
humans. And the dogs may want to join them.
CLAIM: Cat licensing will result in more cats being redeemed at shelters.
Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that cat redemptions are just as
likely, if not more likely, to decline once voluntary cat identification
efforts are replaced with a coercive licensing mandate. In Los Angeles
County, for instance, the number of stray cats redeemed by their owners
was reported to be down 32% following implementation of mandatory laws.
Proponents have tended to ignore evidence like this, and instead point to
the fact that dogs, who have been subject to licensing laws for years,
enjoy higher redemption rates than cats. But dogs differ from cats in many
ways, and there is no reason to think licensing is the factor that results
in the higher redemption rate for dogs. Indeed, San Francisco 63% of the
stray dogs at the City's Animal Care and Control Department were redeemed
by their owners in the 1993-94 fiscal year. Yet less that 4% of the dogs
impounded during that time were licensed. It seems clear, then, that
factors other than licensing are responsible for the high redemption rate
for dogs.
The most obvious reason for the difference between dog and cat redemption
rates is the fact that a much higher proportion of the dogs who are
impounded are "owned" in the first place. Few dogs are found, for
instance, in the type of feral or doorstep colonids that thousands of cats
call home, nor are there many unowned neighborhood dogs. Since most dogs
impounded are likely to be "owned" by someone, it makes sense that many
more would be redeemed. And since a much smaller proportion of impounded
cats are "owned" - a Santa Clara study estimated that less than 9% of all
stray cats handled by that county's animal control agency were owned - it
makes sense that far fewer cats are redeemed. A licensing program
obviously can't change that, unless, of course, it is accomplished by
concentrated efforts to round up and kill all unowned cats in a community.
CLAIM: Cat licensing will help reduce the number of stray and abandoned
cats.
The only way cat licensing will reduce the number of stray and abandoned
cats is if it is enforced by rounding up unlicensed cats and taking them
to the local animal control agency where the vast majority will be killed.
And this, we fear, is exactly what will happen. Many individuals and
groups openly advocate for cat control measures like licensing as a
vehicle for round-up-and-kill measures. And even animal control agencies
that disclaim any intention of initiating round-up-and-kill programs will
have to respond to complaints about cats from these individuals and
groups, which will inevitably result in cats being rounded up and killed.
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Without round-up-and-kill measures it seems apparent that cat licensing
will only work to increase, not decrease, the number of homeless cats.
Faced with citations and penalties for not complying cat caretakers who
can't afford the new license fees will be forced to surrender their
animals to the local shelter or abandon them to fend for themselves.
Neighborhood cats, cats in doorstep colonies or multi-cat households,
cherished pets owned by seniors on restricted incomes, feral cats with
caretakers on limited budgets. These are the kinds of cats who will be
most at risk, and for whom a licensing mandate could well be fatal. Of
course, for the stray and abandoned cats already in the community,
licensing will do nothing.
CLAIM: Cat licensing will help decrease shelter euthanasia.
Since cat licensing will likely result in more cats being surrendered to
shelters and abandoned in the community, since it will not appreciably
affect redemptions, and since it may very well become a vehicle for
round-up-and-kill campaigns, it is difficult for us to see how it would
result in a decrease in shelter euthanasia.
CLAIM: Cat licensing will raise money to help fund animal control agencies.
Cat licensing will cost local governments and taxpayers money, not raise
it, resulting in a net loss to animal control and/or other vital
government services. Indeed, we doubt whether revenues raised would even
cover basic administrative expenses. For example, each license fee
collected -and most proposals we've seen set the fee between $5 and $10 -
will have to cover the costs of manufacturing, handling, storing and
mailing the actual licenses (andlor implanting microchips), handling the
checks and cash received, issuing receipts, recording and filing the
necessary data on each cat and owner, updating the data as needed,
responding to public questions and comments, mailing out renewal notices
and reminders, preparing accounting statements and annual program reports,
etc. This list doesn't include overhead or initial start- up expenses,
like hiring and training staff to run the new program and developing ne
computer programs and databases.
And if the fees collected won't cover basic administrative expenses, they
certainly won't cover the enormous costs of public awareness campaigns and
enforcement. As noted above, "voluntary" compliance with cat licensing
mandates is notoriously low. To raise compliance rates, the community will
have to be made aware of the new mandate: door-to-door canvassing, city
and countywide mailings, advertisements in local print media -all bear
significant costs. And these campaigns will have to be repeated on a
regular basis to maintain public awareness. Of course, these efforts alone
won't ensure compliance, and they will have to be backed by meaningful
enforcement. New enforcement staff will have to be hired, or existing
staff taken away from other essential duties, in order to patrol the
community for unlicensed cats, respond to complaints, issue citations,
prepare reports,etc. And all these costs will have to be paid by local
taxpayers, either through higher taxes or through cuts in other vital
government services
CLAIM: Dog owners contribute to animal control costs through licensing
fees; IPs time cat owners pay their fair share.
Just as licensing fees aren't likely to cover the real costs of a cat
licensing program, we strongly doubt whether the fees now paid by dog
owners cover much more than the basic costs of administering dog licensing
programs. From a fiscal standpoint, therefore, local governments and
taxpayers, not to mention dog owners, may well be better off if mandatory
dog licensing were simply abolished. In any event, enacting another costly
government program that won't pay for itself isn't the way to give dog
owners the equity they seek.
No doubt there will be animal control agencies and contracting humane
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organizations who dispute our analysis and offer projections to show that
cat licensing will make money for animal control services in their
communities. we believe these agencies should be willing to stand behind
these projections by having their taxpayer- financed budgets cut by the
projected amount. Without this or a similar mechanism for accountability,
we fear cat licensing will become yet another expensive government program
that only works to inappropriately expand government bureaucracies at the
expense of local taxpayers, responsible cat caretakers, and the animals
themselves.
CLAIM: Regulating cat owners through licensing and other mandates is the
only way to solve cat problems.
In our view, the way to teach people to be responsible pet owners and help
the cats in a community at large through coercive mandates, when it is the
local shelters who are the primary source of animals and whose policies
and practices have the greatest impact, for better or worse, on local
animal welfare issues.
We realize, however that in some cases local shelter policies may have
failed and animal problems may be worsening in a community. In such cases,
government intervention might be warranted, provided it is carefully
focused to have the greatest impact. For instance, requiring shelters to
alter animals before adoption and to devote a substantial proportion of
their annual animal control and shelter budgets (e.g., 10-20%) to offering
free spay/neuter services would do fa~ more to help cats and reduce pet
overpopulation than cat licensing and other punitive mandates.
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