I am a Cat Woman. My self-appointed mission in life is to save the feline world! To accomplish this mission, I get cats fixed. Perhaps my mission might be slightly delusional. This blog is a mishmash of wishful thinking, rants, experiences as I remember them and of course, cat stories and cat photos. I have a nonprofit now, to help keep the cats here cared for and to fix community cats. Happy Cat Club formed in 2015. Currently, we are on a mission to fix 10,000 cats.
Saturday, June 06, 2020
Petition Against Our State's Insane Animal Rescue Fee
Unfortunately the news was not fake about the extreme increase in license fees on animal rescues. The fees actually can be applied to anyone at all who has ten or more animals under their care. The state is revenue hunting I guess.
Here's a link to a petition about the extreme new state fees on animal rescuers.
This all came about as a bill a year or two ago, I can't recall when it was, that was suddenly passed without anyone knowing til the last second. The bill declared all animal rescues had to be licensed, inspected, pay fees to the county animal control, itself coming under the law, and could be entered by the law without a warrant, which of course is a violation of the constitution. There are already a lot of laws in Oregon about animal neglect, abuse and abandonment, almost none of which are routinely enforced.
The same rules in the new law vaguely applied to anyone who has ten or more animals of any kind. Nobody knows where the money collected goes. It does nothing to help animals.
Most counties never implemented another useless law, nor did they set up infrastructure to force the licenses on people with over ten animals (probably a quarter of households around this county, lol) or the fees, which most people could not pay anyhow, which would force the county to take in all their animals, which no county wants to do. Our county has zero services for cats. They can't take in someone's 12 cats because they can't pay a hefty yearly license fee. They'd have to kill them, which would show the true colors of the law itself, that it is not about helping animals but about collecting money.
So now collection, inspection and enforcement have been handed over to the state, although nobody was aware of this. I wasn't, until that confusing email string from two nights ago. The state will likely try to get way more people, with ten or more animals, to pay up, since they seem always so money hungry. And they immediately decided to increase the fee amount by hundreds of dollars. It's just all so wrong.
There are the big outfits in Oregon, who take in thousands of animals, get millions in donations and to such entities, $600 is like a penny. To most of the small rescues, who take in under $25k a year in donations, its a vast amount. It's a killer. And like being slapped in the face for volunteering to help animals. Like what we do is worthless, like we are all presumed criminals who must be punished, fined and monitored.
The original bill was the result of an ugly flipper situation. Flippers are people who profit off homeless animals. Flippers bring in out of state dogs from high kill shelters and quickly flip them, selling them for large sums. Others get unwanted dogs off craigslist or facebook, to resell. Those who don't sell are often abandoned or killed.
This particular lady had tons of dogs from California in a warehouse all in tiny filthy carriers. It was raided and she was arrested, got almost no time in jail, and then Oregon Humane decided this law should be pushed through, although she was easily prosecuted (lightly) through existing law.
Those petitions do pretty much nothing to change anything, unfortunately. But sign and share if you want.
I call the fees Volunteer Fines and Punishment.
UPDATE: Caught that other board pile kitten this morning when I returned the ones fixed yesterday and right before a down pour. It's a boy, and I dropped him at Chelsea's. She has his siblings, so he's with them again now.
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Here's hoping the powers that be come to their senses quidkly.
ReplyDeleteYou think that's even possible? Lol.
DeleteI’ve never heard of dogs being turned over for profit. I did work with an elderly woman whose pure bred not-spayed dog was stolen. I’m not sure what kind it was. It was a white ball of poof.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, flippers are extremely common in this part of the country. And yeah, they also steal dogs to sell.
DeleteI thought maybe the thieves stole Kiki to breed her, because she was not fixed.
DeleteI wonder if that's why. That's sad. There are quite a lot of dog thefts in our area, usually prebreds or puppies.
DeleteI wished I lived in Oregon so I could sign the petition. Like so many other laws, the details of this one have not been thought out.
ReplyDeleteYou got that right, L and L.
DeleteFor all the good it will do I have signed.
ReplyDeleteThe very politest thing I can say to the money hungry State is hiss and spit.
That is obscene and silly. In equal measure.
THANKS EC, I just directed a state senator from this area to the petition. I hope she can straighten it out. She's no nonsense.
DeleteThat gives me *some* hope. ~hugs~ And thank you for adding tat uplifting update. Take care, my dear.
DeleteThere plenty of need to be done on our society including the four leg ones
ReplyDeleteSure is.
DeleteNothing like discouraging people who are trying to make the world better. While they're looking for ways to take money from those who can't afford it in order to help those who can, why not pass a "poor tax" whereby those who can't afford life's necessities are taxed in order to discourage poverty. Here's a tax I could support. I hereby propose a tax whereby anyone who tithes to a church (so that they'll have a clear shot at getting into heaven) is tithed a second time (we could call it a religion excess tax) for the benefit of abandoned animals.
ReplyDelete