With the law on your side, you can gain more credibility for your cause—and more funding

When Marilyn Haggerty-Blohm wanted to find a way to ensure the sterilization of all animals adopted from the New York City Center for Animal Care and Control (CACC), she didn't create a voucher system. She didn't create a certificate program. She didn't ask for deposits from adopters.

She tugged on the long arm of the law—or rather, the New York City Council. As director of the center, Haggerty-Blohm knew she couldn't spay and neuter her animals without funding. She also knew she couldn't get funding without the support of the city council. And in a city of 7.3 million people—with a licensing compliance rate of only 10 percent and only a handful of ACOs—a voucher or deposit program that would require extensive follow-ups with adopters was simply not feasible.

So Haggerty-Blohm helped get an ordinance passed that requires the spaying and neutering not only of all shelter animals but also of all animals sold in the city's pet stores. "We pushed this because I wanted to be able to spay or neuter every animal who left our shelter," she says. "That was sort of our impetus to get this passed."

Passed in May, the ordinance requires sterilization of any animal released from municipal shelters, whether the animals are being adopted or returned to their owners. It also requires the city government to fund full-service shelters with spay/neuter clinics in each of the city's five boroughs, meaning that over the next few years New York City will have to build three new shelters. While some animal advocates in the city had worried that funding might never materialize, the city is already putting its money where its mouth is, plowing ahead with interim solutions until new facilities can be built.

The city has sent requests for proposals to local veterinarians, asking vets to enter into contractual service with the CACC for a minimum of two days a week, sterilizing no fewer than 30 animals a day. Two mobile spay/neuter vans will also be used as stationary surgical suites four days a week, and on the fifth day, the vans will roam around the city so veterinarians can perform off-site spay/neuters on non-shelter animals. On weekends, the vans will serve as mobile adoption units. "And the budgeting included all of that—drivers for the vans, staffing, equipment, all the costs associated with the vans," says Haggerty-Blohm. Budgetary provisions also include funding for hiring a second staff veterinarian, who will be able to spay and neuter all male cats in-house; other animals will be sent out for surgery.

Haggerty-Blohm's efforts have paid off. New York's expenditures on the spay/neuter programs this year—$700,000 from May through year's end—are a sign of its commitment to the city's animal care and control agency and to the homeless animal problem. In the coming year, Haggerty-Blohm expects the funding amount to climb to $1.3 million.

Lone-Star Sterilization

A statewide sterilization law passed in 1992 in Texas has had a similar positive effect on local agencies, providing the support shelters need when requesting government funding. Under the law, no shelter or adoption organization may place cats or dogs unless the animals have been sterilized or unless the new owner has signed a detailed sterilization agreement.

"This statute has had a major positive impact," says Pam Burney, director of Environmental Services for the city of North Richland Hills, Texas. "It's especially useful for municipal agencies like ours, because it demonstrates to our elected officials that we have a legal mandate to ensure that the animals we adopt out are sterilized."

The bill also carries some weight with adopters, says James Bias, executive director of the Humane Society/SPCA of Bexar County in San Antonio, Texas. "The statute allows Texas shelters to easily reclaim any animal whose adoptive owner refuses to provide sterilization," he says. "Of all the difficult tasks that shelters face, it makes this one quite a bit easier."

As powerful as the law is, however, it does have some drawbacks. First, even though rural communities are as likely as larger ones to contribute to pet homelessness, the law exempts counties in Texas with a population of 20,000 or fewer and municipalities with a population of 10,000 or fewer. Also, agencies that don't comply suffer no repercussions, says Cile Holloway, president of the Texas Humane Legislation Network in Austin, Texas. "While it makes noncompliance on the part of the adopter a misdemeanor offense, there is no penalty for an agency that doesn't enforce [the law]," says Holloway. "If the agency is comfortable letting an animal go without sterilization, then that's the end of the situation."

The same is true in Massachusetts, where state law requires animal shelters to secure from adopters a spay/neuter deposit not to exceed $30. The money sits in a holding account until shelters can provide the state with documentation that proves the adopters have had their animals sterilized. And getting that documentation can be like pulling teeth, since many people spay and neuter their pets but never try to redeem their deposit money, says Emmanuela "Mandy" Cannistraro, shelter manager of the Massachusetts SPCA's Cape Cod branch. (See above for more information about the Cape Cod shelter's spay/neuter program.) "[The law] was a nice thought," says Cannistraro. "But if you want to get them spayed or neutered, you've got to have a more drastic system."

Conflicting Codes in California

It is possible to be too drastic, however, says Virginia Handley, California coordinator for the Fund for Animals. A spay/neuter law that took effect in California last January requires all shelters in counties with human populations of at least 100,000 to sterilize animals before adoption. Those shelters in counties with populations of fewer than 100,000 must collect a $40 spay/neuter deposit from each adopter.

In theory, the law is ideal for curbing overpopulation. Unfortunately, however, shelters in some areas are finding that few veterinarians are willing to sterilize puppies and kittens younger than four to six months of age. This means that shelters must either hold on to these animals for long periods of time or euthanize them despite their adoptability. It also means even more overcrowding in shelters already filled far beyond capacity because of the recently passed "Hayden" law, which has lengthened holding periods for stray animals and established minimum holding periods for owner-relinquished animals. (See The Best-Laid Plans... in The Front Lines for more information on the Hayden law.)

If the spay/neuter law had been enacted in a vacuum—without the burdens of the Hayden law to contend with—shelters would have been far better off, says Handley. "We'd still have had the same problems with the veterinarians refusing to do the early spaying ... but at least the animals wouldn't be sitting in an overcrowded facility," she says. "[Now, shelters] finally get an animal adopted, and two weeks later, he's come down with kennel cough or parvo..."

Additionally, some shelters in California have had longstanding relationships with legitimate adoption/placement groups in their communities; historically, many of those groups have been able to secure low-cost spay/neuter services for adopted animals. Under the new law, however, the groups now pay substantially higher fees to cover the costs of surgeries once procured at a deep discount or for free from local veterinarians. The volunteer-run groups also have to do more legwork, sometimes driving long distances to select animals at the shelters they work with, and then driving back again later to pick up the animals post-surgery.

Although California is unique because it passed two sweeping—and often conflicting—laws back-to-back, the California situation points to the need for adequate planning and preparation in developing sterilization legislation. The HSUS advocates thorough and well-thought-out legislation requiring sterilization of animals adopted from sheltering agencies or similar sources; such legislation can significantly heighten an agency's ability to enforce sterilization compliance. For information about existing laws around the country, and assistance with proposed legislation in your state or community, contact the Government Affairs section of The HSUS at 202-452-1100.