Virginia Hunting Dog Owner's Association

----- Original Message -----
From: vhdoa@mailman.montana.com
To: S_VHDOA
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 12:31 PM
Subject: The Last General Assembly Push - Please Read

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.
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Dear Virginia Friends,

2006 General Assembly lobbying to protect your interests is nearly over. The period between now and February 14, 2006 is extremely important, because bad things tend to happen at the end of legislative sessions. Practically speaking, the weekdays 2/6-10 and 2/13 are all that are left to concern us. On 2/14, bills passed by one chamber will "crossover" to the other for each other's consideration. Very rarely is a bill passed by one chamber materially changed or not passed by the other. Since the Senate has passed two radically different dangerous dog (DD) owner laws, the House will have to deal with those, either combining them, or insisting on its own bill. That seems likely to be our only post-crossover business.

Of the forty (40) dog and hunting bills monitored and/or lobbied by VHDOA, all but the DD and four other bills have been satisfactorily resolved, as documented at http://vhdoa.uplandbirddog.com/staterk.html We have the time to address the remaining bills and ~40-50 people's effort could make positive changes to these bills, or defeat them. Previous VHDOA lobbying messages are attached for reference, as is a copy & paste email listing of the House Courts of Justice Committee membership to guide you on the bills discussed below.

HB1039 Dangerous Dogs - This bill, strongly preferred over HB340, was rescheduled before the full House Courts Committee for Monday, 2/5 afternoon. It's critical that this bill be reported. See attachments for its merits re HB340. HB1039 lacks two minor items. It should be amended to include the Dangerous Dog Registry provisions of the Houck and Orrock bills and delete, as the other bills do, an animal control officer’s ability to bypass the courts and self-declare a dog as dangerous in § 3.1-796.93:1.E. That's ALL that should be done to HB1039. Make your Courts contacts ASAP, but absolutely no later than noon 2/6, using the emails provided and including your complete address.

HB340 Dangerous Dogs - Concerns about this bill criminally penalizing the owner of a dog that injures another pet or a feral cat isn't resonating with legislators. The fact that such a dog owner could be jailed and the dog almost certainly put down, isn't moving those disturbed by Mrs. Sullivan's death and wanting to pass "something" pro-active. What might impress legislators is the fact that HB340 provides criminal penalties for the least little bite of a human. Unlike HB1039's carefully structured judicial test of clearly irresponsible owner behavior and a serious injury, HB340 simply says if someone is injured and your dog was involved, you're both guilty. There are very, very limited exemptions. Based on peer-reviewed CDC statistics and reports, there were 115,000 human dog bite incidents in Virginia last year; 20,000 of them required some level of medical care. Under HB340, every one of those ~100,000 dog owners would be forced to hire a lawyer and defend himself and his dog in court, if a complaint were filed with law enforcement. HB340 prosecutions have the distinct possibility of overwhelming Virginia's courts and filling its jails with dog owners. Every bill passed by the General Assembly must contain a fiscal impact statement, quantifying its economic impacts on local and state government. HB340's fiscal impact statement dramatically understates its costs, by $ tens of millions. Since the bill creates new penalties, there's no Virginia history of such confinement costs and the bill's full economic on the state, counties and cities has been missed.

Somehow, we need to tell this story and get our legislators to understand it. The House Appropriations Committee must approve such bills, but no such hearing has been set for HB340. Not only is HB1039 the more effective dangerous dog bill, HB340 would cost Virginia taxpayers $$ millions and not deal with the real problem.

First thing Monday, please contact your delegate via email or the 1-800-889-0229 number. Also contact House Speaker Howell (804) 698-1028 and Appropriations Committee Chairman Callahan (804) 698-1034. Ask them all to thoroughly scrutinize HB340's likely high costs to Virginia's counties and cities.

HB339 VA Animal Owner Database and Spay-Neuter Funding - No change. We need to defeat this bill on the floor. Make sure your delegate and veterinarian knows how strongly you object to this bill. Call Monday early.

The last of the four non-DD bills requiring your immediate attention are three non-law measures before the Rules Committees. Resolutions and study bills don't have any immediate effect, but their longer-range impact can be profound. That was demonstrated last session, when HJ768, a nonsensical resolution reciting high sheltering costs, rampant euthanasia, and other harm done by irresponsible dog owners and breeders passed the General Assembly. As a direct result, numerous spay-neuter and differential fee bills were introduced this year and our task was made infinitely harder. VHDOA was the only group to oppose HJ768 last year, but its efforts weren't successful. Resolutions and studies are normally harmless, except when they're not.

VHDOA's General Assembly contact page has been updated to include capsule summaries of SJ166, HJ116, HJ209 and Rules Committee member preprogrammed emails. Two of the bills advance the animal rightist's effort to insert "humane" education in Virginia K-12 curriculum, while Delegate Kilgore's review of ACO training should be strongly supported. See the Center for Consumer Freedom's review of humane education efforts by HSUS and PETA at http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm?headline=2749

Time is of the essence. The world is governed by those that get involved and speak up.

Please forward and cross post widely. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Bob Kane
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.

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