Time/Place: 8:30 am, Wednesday, 1/16/08
General Assembly Building, House Room C
We need you in Richmond tomorrow morning at 8:30.
This may be the only shot we get at passing the Humane Investigator Bill.
This is the hearing for the Humane Investigator bill, House Bill 464 (HB 464), patroned by Del. David Albo. The link to the bill:
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?ses=081&typ=bil&val=hb464
Please be there as this bill is very important to Virginia’s animals.
This bill will be heard by the full House Agriculture Committee chaired by Del. Harvey Morgan.
Please let us know if you will be there and are willing to say a few words (less than a minute) in support of the bill.
Please bring along any others who can speak to why we need humane investigators, be they
Commonwealth Attorneys, ACOs, rescuers, etc.
The Farm Bureau will speak against this bill, hard as that is to believe. The lobbyist for the Farm Bureau is well respected by the legislators, so it will take many citizen advocates calling, emailing, and/or speaking to get this bill passed.
Please do this:
First, thank Del. Albo for being the patron for this important piece of legislation. His full name is Del. David B. Albo. His email: DelDAlbo@house.state.va.us
Contact all the members of the House Ag Committee in support of the bill.
It’s easy to email the Committee members. Click on the link just below, and they are each named/hyper-linked so all you need to do is click on their names and send the message.
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?081+com+H1
The subject line should be: please vote in favor of HB 464
The message should ask them to pass HB 464 and reinstate the Humane Investigator program. See the talking points below for additional ideas.
Next, send a quick note or make a quick phone call to your own delegate, and let them know you want this bill passed, and so you ask their support. This is particularly important to do if your delegate also happens to be a member of the House Ag Committee.
background:
a robust humane investigator group existed in Virginia until the program was curtailed (except for those already humane investigators) in 2003; no new humane investigators would be ap-pointed unless it was to fill the position currently filled; no new slots would be created; existing humane investigators continued to be required to have continuing education courses, and failure to meet continuing education requirements resulted in a slot being vacated and that slot also ter-minated
talking points:
a. there is no official list of humane investigators, but the best estimates are that about six re-main in the entire state of Virginia
b. this bill restores the program and removes the limitations placed on it by the 2003 law
c. since this program was curtailed, animals have gone unserved because of a lack of public resources to fund animal control
d. trained citizen volunteers are an efficient solution to this gap in service; humane investiga-tors are volunteers trained to work on animal welfare cases
e. animals requiring intervention – animals being abused - whether companion or farm animals, receive that help from humane investigators
f. humane investigators work side-by-side with animal control officers and can be described as another pair of hands – but hands that are trained
g. humane investigators can be described as similar to a volunteer fire department; humane in-vestigators assist Animal Control Officers and law enforcement generally
h. humane investigators are volunteers and do this work because they are dedicated to the ani-mals; it makes no sense to remove a volunteer program of trained humane investigators; it now needs to be re-instated
i. this program does not cost jurisdictions money; however, because they value this program so highly, some jurisdiction reimburse the out-of-pocket expenses of humane investigators; others pay some portion of insurance for the humane investigator; some jurisdictions pay nothing
j. the activity and generosity of humane investigators as volunteers improves the moral tone and quality of life for Virginians
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This bill will not go first to the House Ag SubCommittee chaired by Del. Bobby Orrock as had been anticipated.
I wish we had better lead times, but we don‘t, and this quickly-changing schedule will be the pat-tern for the rest of the session. We will try to get word to you as quickly as we can.
Lillian Clancy and Don Marro
PS: We will get out an alert as quickly as possible that provides talking points for all the bills.