Virginia Hunting Dog Owner's Association

----- Original Message -----
From: vhdoa@mailman.montana.com
To: S_VHDOA
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 11:38 PM
Subject: General Assembly Lobbying Postmortem and Outlook

A VHDOA message to dog owning sportsmen about protecting their traditions, avocations and livelihoods from anti-hunting, anti-breeding, animal guardianship advocates. Forwarding and cross posting, with attribution, encouraged.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear Virginia Sportsmen and Dog Owners,

Most of this week's legislative action was in yesterday's House Agriculture Committee meeting, the focus of many of your emails and phone calls. Both HB339 (Animal License Fees) and HB340 (Dangerous Dog Owner Criminal Penalties) were further amended and reported (passed) at that meeting. The amended (substitute) bills are now available online. See the updates and hot links at http://vhdoa.uplandbirddog.com/staterk.html Here's a capsule summary.

HB339
$10/$5 statewide fees stripped. Lines 47-57 of the introduced and 2/26 subcommittee reported bill in pdf. Public monies for public-private spay-neuter programs stripped. Lines 119-120 of the introduced and 2/26 subcommittee reported bill in pdf.

What's left in HB339 is the Vet rabies, spay-neuter information-owner reporting requirement to county treasurers for their direct license billing purposes, (to increase tag sales - a pipe dream). No one who spoke before the five member AG subcommittee on HB339 was permitted to address the full 22-member committee. I was the only HB339 opponent at either meeting and wasn't permitted to testify, but VHDOA's post subcommittee press releases identifying the 99 counties and cities that would have had to increase fees under HB339's $10/$5 mandates caused that and the spay-neuter provision's deletion, as did your many emails and phone calls. It's unfortunate that the AKC's show dog federation supported this ill-advised bill, but positive changes were made in it, despite the patron's misstatements about VHDOA's spreading false rumors about the bill, cats not being licensed in Virginia (eight counties license cats) and other matters. Please make a note of the six delegates that voted against the amended HB339. They deserve your thanks.

Lee Ware (804) 698-1065
Kathy Byron (804) 698-1022
Chris Saxman (804) 698-1020
Clarke Hogan (804) 698-1060
Ben Cline (804) 698-1024
Ed Scott (804) 698-1030

HB340 (Dangerous Dog Owner Criminal Penalties) was a very heavily lobbied bill. Not only did many of you contact full AG committee members objecting to this bill's features, so did the bill's supporters. For the first time in recent memory, HSUS corporate had a professional lobbyist present to support HB340, as did the various HSUS clones, including the VFHS, VACA, et al. Also supporting this dreadful bill was Tom Evans, representing the Virginia Federation of Dog Clubs and Breeders (VFDCB). Our efforts made a very small dent in HB340. The patron offered a change to lines 23-24 of the reported pdf bill, i.e.
However, when a dog attacks or bites a companion animal, the attacking or biting dog shall not be deemed dangerous (i) if no serious physical injury as determined by a licensed veterinarian has occurred to the companion animal as a result of the attack or bite, or (ii) if the animals are owned by the same person, or (iii) if such attack occurs on the dog owner's property.

That, rather limited exemption was clearly in direct response to VHDOA's widely circulated example of a dog injuring an intruder cat in its own back yard and the dog owner and dog both suffering as a result. More significant for hunting dog owners was an "unfriendly" amendment offered by Victoria's Tommy Wright. This change clearly disturbed the patron. Teresa Dockery of VFHS-VACA objected to it. I spoke in its favor. No one else spoke on the change. The accepted amendment to lines 24-26 protects dogs that might injure pets or feral cats while hunting. It reads " No dog shall be found to be a dangerous dog as a result of biting, attacking, or inflicting injury on a companion animal while engaged with an owner or custodian as part of lawful hunting or participating in an organized, lawful dog handling event."

In the final analysis, very few legislators wanted to vote against HB340, no matter how dreadful a bill it is (presuming they understood that), for fear of being labeled supportive of vicious dogs and their irresponsible owners, or unfeeling of the Sullivan family's tragedy. Two solid legislators resisted the emotional ground swell and voted against reporting HB340, Lee Ware and Clarke Hogan.

Action Item: Please contact Delegate Tommy Wright (804) 698-1061 to thank him for his valuable HB340 amendment and to urge that he resist the almost certain effort to remove his amendment before a House floor vote. Also make that same call to your individual House representative.

Looking ahead.
There are four active General Assembly Dangerous Dog Owner Criminal Penalty bills, SB200, SB491, HB340 and HB1039. At this point, SB200 and SB491 have both passed the Senate and are awaiting House action. SB491 and HB1039 contain identical, well-crafted Crime Commission language creating class 6 felony punishments for truly irresponsible dog owner behavior that results in severe injury to a human. Neither Crime Commission bill includes criminal penalties for dog injuries to pets or feral cats, as SB200 and HB340 do. The animal rightists, ADOA and VFDCB strongly support SB200 and HB340. I see these bills as unnecessary overkill and harmful advancement of the AR agenda.

There is a possibility that the few, limited positive features of HB340 might be incorporated into HB1039 tomorrow afternoon at a House Courts of Justice Committee meeting. Should that effort fail, as it did in Senate AG, the two chambers will work on each other's conflicting bills and probably required a House-Senate conference to reconcile further differences.

Action Item: Please take the opportunity first thing tomorrow to contact Courts members and urge that they report (pass) HB1039 and also consider incorporating just two HB340 provisions, its Dangerous Dog Registry and the elimination of animal control officer self-determinations of which dogs are dangerous, leaving that decision to the courts.

In other news, five DGIF bills that reorganized, reformed and otherwise tried to improve governance after last year's scandal have in consolidated into a single, non-controversial bill, HB362. Maybe next year the needed process and procedural reforms will find more support. Partisan politics prevented such considerations this year. The bear parts sale bill, HB1061 was predictably buried.
SB 55 - Companion animal dealers, the VVAW bill introduced By Sen. Reynolds and not resolved by the Senate AG Committee on January 23, 2006, remains in limbo. It wasn't on the committee's agenda this week and isn't there for next Monday. Rumors of two or more substitutes have circulated this past week, but nothing's official. Unless the bill is reported and passed by a floor vote before February 14th, it dies on its own.

There are a few bills of modest concern pending before House Rules and Finance Committees. More on those later. Thank you for your magnificent support these last very trying weeks.

Sincerely,
Bob Kane, President
Virginia Hunting Dog Owners' Association
http://vhdoa.uplandbirddog.com/
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The message above was posted to Virginia residents by the Virginia Hunting Dog Owners' Association (VHDOA).

VHDOA is a nonpartisan volunteer group working to protect sportsmen and hunting dog owners from the legislative and political threats of radical animal rightists. We lobby the General Assembly and Congress, when necessary. It is the largest Virginia organization fighting this struggle and has an established record of accomplishments for both sportsmen and dog owners in these arenas. Visit our website at http://vhdoa.uplandbirddog.com/ for our mission statement, goals, legislative track record and elist signup details.

To unsubscribe from this list, exercise that option at http://mailman.montana.com/mailman/listinfo/vhdoa/