The signatories of this letter represent more than 100 private and public Virginia animal sheltering organizations with tens of thousands of supporters combined, as well as dozens of cities and counties that serve hundreds of thousands of Virginians across the Commonwealth. Our constituents have a genuine stake in the operations of and outcomes at their local public and private shelters.
We understand that the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) will consider at its March 19, 2015, meeting a petition for rulemaking from the No-Kill Advocacy Center (NKAC). The NKAC is a California-based one-person organization whose “headquarters” is a post office box in a UPS store in Oakland. According to the NKAC’s most recently filed Form 990 (2013), the NKAC has no local chapters, branches, or affiliates. The organization’s director, Nathan Winograd, denies the existence of an animal overpopulation crisis, claims that overpopulation is a “myth,” and refers to it as “the lie at the heart of the killing.” Please note that in 2013, more than 242,000 animals entered Virginia animal shelters, and in 2014 (based on currently available numbers) the figure was more than 211,300.
Winograd refers to euthanasia of animals in shelters as “convenience killing” and “wholesale slaughter” and has referred to animal shelters as “killing pounds,” among other derogatory terms. The NKAC’s modus operandi is to demonize shelters and blame euthanasia on those who must perform it. In March 2013, for example, Winograd wrote: “In the end, killing is occurring in our nation’s shelters not because there are too many animals, but because killing is easier than doing what is necessary to stop it, and because as heartless as that reason is, shelter directors have been allowed to do it anyway. … In fact, the lie of pet overpopulation is at the heart of the killing paradigm. It is the primary excuse that allows shelter directors to shift the blame from their own failure to save lives to someone else.”
The NKAC does not rescue, shelter, or care for any animals in California, Virginia, or anywhere else.
The NKAC petition itself is confusing if not misinformed. The recordkeeping rules for shelters in the Commonwealth—which are extensive—are found in the statutes of Virginia, not in the regulatory framework. It appears that the NKAC does not understand Virginia’s legal structure. Specific requirements already exist in statutes such as:
3.2-6502, which provides for the power of the state veterinarian to inspect shelters
3.2-6557, which sets forth the records that animal control officers, shelters, and humane investigators must keep for each animal taken into custody
3.2-6503, which provides for adequate care, including medical care
3.2-6546, which sets forth holding periods, methods and times of disposition of animals, and annual reporting requirements to the state veterinarian
54.1-3423, which provides for shelters to have a supervising veterinarian
With so much oversight currently in place, the NKAC request does not appear to be based on knowledge of Virginia; rather it seems another attempt by this organization to intimidate Virginians and Virginia’s animal shelters.
As for the specifics of the recordkeeping “suggestions,” it is unclear what if anything they are expected to accomplish and/or how. Imposing additional recordkeeping burdens on public and private shelters will do nothing to enhance the care of animals or increase the number of potential adopters of animals awaiting homes in shelters. The only consequences of these additional recordkeeping and public inspection–related requirements would be to divert already-strained resources away from direct animal care work, including cruelty investigations, rescue of animals in distress, adoptions, and more. Additionally, the proposed rules would create disincentives for individuals in distress to surrender animals to shelters because they would be required to report their private personal circumstances—for instance, medical or financial hardship—that caused them to give up the animal on a form that would then be made available for public inspection, potentially in violation of their statutory and constitutional rights to privacy. Similarly, the proposed rules would create disincentives for private animal shelters to take in unadoptable animals, thereby increasing the burden on already overburdened public animal shelters without providing any additional funds to meet that increased burden. It is clear that the petitioner does not want Virginia shelters to accept animals at all unless they subscribe to his ideology.
Almost every single one of the 605 (as of this writing) public comments currently posted at http://www.townhall.virginia.gov/l/ViewPetition.cfm?petitionid=218 demonstrate that individuals, too, are entirely unfamiliar with Virginia laws and/or Virginia’s legislative process. Many of the comments include statements like “I support NO KILL SHELTERS!”; “No Kill Shelters in Virginia!”; “No kill is a wonderful thing! Please do the right thing and make this happen!”; “They can't speak for themselves... we have to be their voice! We need no kill shelters. Give them a chance. All animals deserve a chance!”; “I 1000 % support this bill!”; “all shelters should be No Kill! Find them homes”; “Stop killing our animals! Support No Kill! It's disgusting and a criminal injustice to allow the continued operation of ‘animal shelters’ that have no interest in placing animals in safe and loving homes. These operations exist only to kill healthy annals [sic] and they need to be shut down immediately”; etc. It is unknown whether the comment writers are Virginians or whether they have any knowledge and/or experience of shelter operations or the current recordkeeping requirements.
It is a shame that the administrative and rulemaking process of Virginia is being ambushed by those who don’t know the first thing about and are not invested in the professional operations of public and private shelters in Virginia. Virginia animals and shelters should not be allowed to become victims of a public relations campaign or organizational chest-thumping exercise by someone in California who does nothing to advance the welfare of animals.
There is an extraordinary amount of transparency displayed by shelters in Virginia. There are many states for which information about the number of animals in shelters or their outcomes is simply unavailable. It is odd that Virginia should be targeted by this organization, given the Commonwealth’s strong tradition of annual reporting and transparency.
Further, public animal shelters’ records have always been available to the public. In fact, there are some public shelters from which thousands of records have been requested by individuals or organizations over many years. These requests already divert many resources away from those shelters’ operations—the records have to be pulled, copied, and made available for review, and all this takes hours and hours. This petition requires that these records be made available “free,” but of course, the work required to accomplish that isn’t free—it is the taxpayers who subsidize the work of these shelters. The demand for free records is also in conflict with the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, which allows public agencies to recoup some of the costs of providing records to the public.
Private shelters are also included in this petition, which is a relatively new approach for entities totally or primarily funded by donor dollars. While private shelters are subject to the recordkeeping regulations, many of them have routinely rejected requests for information regarding a specific record unless subject to subpoena or with the permission of the individual included in the records. Though private organizations, they would now be expected to comply with the same provisions for release of records as would public shelters if the proposed rules were adopted. And presumably, if the petitioner has his way, so would veterinarians, whose treatment records would be part of the file of any shelter animal who receives veterinary care. But veterinarians and veterinary clinics are already subject to their own recordkeeping requirements and regulated by another agency altogether.
In addition, if these new recordkeeping requirements are adopted, the attending oversight and the monitoring for compliance could significantly increase the costs to the regulators, in this case VDACS. Would every request for records be scrutinized by VDACS? Would the time frame required for VDACS to respond be the same as for a FOIA request?
If we truly wish to enrich and improve the information gathered via the annual reporting requirements, there are many other pieces of information that should be gathered. How many animals were rejected by or turned away from each shelter? Were these presented in person, by telephone, or via e-mail? Why were the animals turned away? What are the names and contact information of those surrendering animals so that they can be confirmed by reviewers? Where were the rejected animals referred to—a private shelter or a public shelter, and which one? What were the circumstances under which each animal in a shelter died, how long was the animal in the shelter’s care, and why was the animal allowed to die unassisted, rather than being humanely euthanized? How many animals has the shelter spayed or neutered, including for the public?
It is troubling that an organization with no stakeholder position in Virginia should see fit to waste the time of the Board and the Department and attempt to bully our state’s animal shelters and the dedicated professionals who care for its homeless and unwanted animals every single day into conforming to his misguided ideology.