Special to The Legal Animal.
Update June 19 [/]
The Louisiana Pet Evacuation Bill, SB 607, was sent to Governor Kathleen Blanco Monday for her signature. Blanco has said she supports the legislation, and is expected to sign the bill.
The bill passed the House unanimously last Thursday, with a vote of 93 to 0. The amendments added by the House were then approved unanimously on the Senate floor Friday by a special motion.
[b] Story June 16 The bill passed Thursday with a unanimous vote and 67 co-sponsors.
Photo: A woman communes with her dog during a rally in support of the Pet Evacuation Bill. The Louisiana Pet Evacuation Bill passed the state House Thursday with a unanimous vote, no debate, and a whopping 67 co-sponsors.
The bill, SB 607, will now go to conference committee, so that the House and Senate versions of the bill may be reconciled. Gov. Kathleen Blanco announced last week during a visit with President Bush that she supports the measure, and is expected to sign the bill when it reaches her desk.
Since SB 607 was first introduced by Sen. Heulette “Clo” Fontenot (R-Livingston), its progress has been propelled by unprecedented grassroots support, as hundreds of emails, phone calls, faxes and letters poured into senators’ and representatives’ offices in support of the measure.
However, despite the overwhelming legislative support for the measure that emerged at the end – it also passed unanimously through the state Senate – the rocky progress of the bill has given supporters several uneasy moments.
At first, financial concerns seemed destined to kill the bill, as legislative cost estimates put the price tag of the legislation at $2 million for set costs, plus $2.2 million per evacuation – with an estimate of seven evacuations per year. Advocates of the bill contended that these estimates were overblown and did not take into account financial contributions from private organizations and the federal government.
The financial concerns were, to some degree, addressed by an amendment added by the Senate finance committee, which stipulated that the bill would not take effect until a special appropriation is made each year out of the state’s $150-million disaster evacuation fund. This requirement was then dropped when the legislation passed the House, so the bill will not require additional legislation for funding.
Last week, supporters of the legislation were again given cause for worry, as a majority of the members of the House judiciary committee that was slated to hear the bill failed to show up for the committee meeting, resulting in the lack of the necessary quorum to pass the bill onto the full House. With the legislative session set to end June 19, this meant that the bill might not be passed to the full House in time for a vote.
Quick legal maneuvering resolved this crisis, as the bill was switched over to the House appropriations committee, which heard the measure Monday and approved the measure with amendments. One amendment shifted responsibility for pet evacuations from the state to local governments, mandating that local governments develop pet-evacuation plans, and that the state office of homeland security play a supporting role in the formulation of these plans.
The House appropriations committee also included other measures designed to cut costs. One of the most significant changes was the elimination of the requirement that pets be housed in shelters “side-by-side” with their human companions. Rather than requiring microchips to be implanted in all evacuated animals, the bill was also altered to provide that animals will be marked with a bar code tag, and that a copy of this tag will be given to owners so that they can later locate their pets.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Fontenot, pronounced that he thought the House version of the bill was a “good compromise.”
The bill still requires that service animals always be evacuated along with people with disabilities, and that all other pets be evacuated along with their owners, whenever it can be accomplished without endangering human life. The bill also requires that pets in carriers be allowed onto public transportation during time of emergency, or that separate transportation to shelters be provided.
Passage of the legislation is a bittersweet victory for many, after the recent death of one of the chief advocates of the bill,
Shannon Moore, who founded Save Our Pets to lobby in support of the legislation.
Moore died the day after the measure passed through the Senate, but had been apprehensive about the future of the legislation at several points during the bill’s journey.
“I don’t think it will make it, and everyone was counting on it,” she said during an interview last month. “It is the only way I can see that we can make sure that what happened during Katrina will never happen again.”
For more information on the Louisiana Pet Evacuation bill, please see previous stories: Louisiana Pet Evacuation Bill passes through House appropriations committee. Pet Evacuation Bill Passes Senate Quietly and Quickly
Pet Evacuation Bill Clears Finance Committee Hurdle Financing Question Endangers Louisiana Pet Evacuation Bill