Hayden Attack

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There is a slight but significant misunderstanding of the attack on the Hayden bill. The fliers say there is no funding for the holding period under the current budget.

That is not quite true.

California law (Hayden) mandates shelters hold animals for four days before killing them. Shelters are reimbursed for animals killed after 72 hours under Hayden because of the legal requirement to keep them the extra 24 hours.

The state is required to repay shelters for the increased cost of the mandated increase of 24 hours. This payment comes out of the state Mandate Fund. I believe it is only a few bucks a day.

A state legislative analyst said Hayden has not caused a decrease in killing, therefore Hayden should be repealed and the money owed shelters be paid out of the Mandate Fund. The funding is already there in that fund, and state law requires local governments (shelters) to be paid their costs for holding the animals. So unless the legislation is directed at overturning state law with regard to all mandate payment to any municipality under mandate, the state still must pay from the Mandate Fund. The other option is to vote Hayden away. The money is there, the will to destroy Hayden is there too.

Get this, not a dime has ever been paid to shelters from that fund. The analyst said that the fees should be paid to the shelters and Hayden repealed. That amount is about $16,000,000 for all the years since Hayden was passed, so it is not a large sum.

The analyst said the state should pass a law that reimburses shelter for each adoption instead of each killing. This, of course makes perfect sense. However, there is no provision in ending Hayden to instead give shelters an incentive to adopt more animals.

That is, it would have to take the form of a new and separate bill sometime down the line, which in this economy would never pass, yet Hayden would be repealed.

This is not an indirect attack on Hayden by means of budgeting Hayden out of existence, it is a direct attack on Hayden by requiring past shelter killing fund rebates be paid off and Hayden be directly repealed.

I would object to the legislators that Hayden not be repealed, unless provision is made in that same bill that there be a significant financial award attached to adoptions IN THAT SAME BILL. This of course would take time to rewrite, and schwartzenneger is trying to save money by killing Hayden; but if killing Hayden means more money has to be rebated to the shelters based on adoptions, legislation to kill Hayden will fail.

I would also note the rebate under Hayden for not killing the extra 24 hours is very small compared to the fees a shelter receives from adoptions. If the rebate is $14 for killing under Hayden, but fees received for adoptions is already 5-8 times that, the financial reward for killing already is not there. But if you add the requirement to pay shelters for adoptions, that increases the financial incentive even more.

One other consideration. We know from past experience that shelters are ignoring Hayden all the time, there is no enforcement nor penalties attached to killing animals early.

When calling these legislators, point out that the legislative analyst was terribly wrong, and that euthanasia has been cut since day one of Hayden 10 years ago. Notable exceptions are such as County under Mayeda whose kill rate has barely declined at all.

Tell them the reason for killing Hayden, that is no success in lowering killing, is absolutely wrong.
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