A Bill That Strayed

On July 1, a bill by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) to improve the way animal shelters care for stray pets becomes law. Hayden wrote the bill with the best of intentions, but as animal shelter directors and leading animal rights groups like the American Humane Assn. have been pointing out, the final bill shifted far from its original purpose and could end up worsening many of the problems it was meant to solve.

What the shelters need now is more time, and a bill by Assemblywoman Elaine White Alquist (D-Santa Clara), up for a key vote today, would provide some animal facilities another year to figure out how to comply.

Hayden’s law will cause great strain in cities like Los Angeles, whose shelters are already at 150% of capacity, because on average it doubles the time that shelters must hold animals before killing them. The L.A. City Council has increased the animal regulation budget 26% to help comply with the new law and also cope better with the packs of strays roaming too many city streets, but the department’s funding per animal is still well below the state average.

Cities like Long Beach and Pasadena that rely on private nonprofit groups for shelter care would be hit hard as well. That’s because many nonprofit animal shelters have said they will stop accepting strays next month because they don’t want to expose themselves to lawsuits over failure to comply with the law’s numerous, demanding provisions, like the prohibition against euthanizing any animal with treatable illness or injuries or because of behavior problems.

Predictably, Hayden says Alquist’s bill is merely an attempt to undermine his own. But in fact, the Alquist bill only gives animal shelters time to comply with his high standards: precisely the sensible phase-in period that should have been included in the Hayden bill in the first place.