Albany Lawmakers to Homeless and Abused Cats and Dogs: Drop Dead
It wasn’t just SARA. State legislators chose not to pass other bills that could have helped companion animals who are fighting for their lives.
The Scoop New York is a newsletter dedicated to companion animals and the New Yorkers who care for them, from Buffalo to Brooklyn. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were nonetheless exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
As The Scoop New York has reported, state legislators declined this year to take up the Shelter Animal Rescue Act, which would have required animal control facilities to release endangered companion animals to qualified rescues, rather than kill them.
SARA wasn’t the only piece of animal-centric legislation that Albany lawmakers failed to pass this session. Other measures to make homeless and abused cats and dogs safer will also have to wait another year.
Shortly before the session ended, state senator and lead Senate sponsor Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) told Politico he believed the legislature was close to banning devocalization surgeries statewide.
“It is a horrific practice to literally rip the vocal cords out of an animal because you don’t like the sound they make,” Gianaris said. “Anyone who’s willing to do that to their pets doesn’t deserve to have a pet.”
Gianaris got it done: the Senate passed the devocalization bill and sent it to the Assembly, where it crashed into the rules committee, chaired by Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), and was stopped dead. Another bill, to prevent insurance companies from discriminating against renters who have pets, also cleared the Senate only to stall in Heastie’s Assembly before being brought to a vote (and, therefore, before being adopted, since bills don’t make it to the floor in Albany unless the outcome is already decided).
Those two measures weren’t the only ones to die in the Assembly, which appears to have passed not one companion animal-friendly bill in 2024.
A bill to strengthen penalties for animal fighting passed the Senate, but stalled in the Assembly codes committee, which is chaired by Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-Bronx). As did a bill to equip humane law enforcement officers with fingerprinting technology to facilitate arrests – passed by the Senate, killed by the Dinowitz codes committee.
Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan), the lead Assembly sponsor of the animal fighting and fingerprinting bills, is a codes committee member. That did not help her bills, or the companion animals who would have benefited had they been signed into law.
Dinowitz and Senate codes committee chair Jamaal Bailey (D-Bronx) each spiked legislation to allow police to take live animals from abusers. Dinowitz was the primary Assembly sponsor, meaning he failed to move his own bill.
Another bill to facilitate the removal of companion animals from harm’s way, by establishing a civil forfeiture process, stalled in the agriculture committee of each chamber. As did legislation that would have elevated penalties for causing injury to a companion animal with a deadly weapon.
As those who have watched the Shelter Animal Rescue Act languish know, the Senate and Assembly agriculture committees are chaired by Michelle Hinchey (D-Kingston) and Donna Lupardo (D-Binghamton), respectively.
It’s possible we missed something, but by The Scoop New York’s count, state lawmakers this session did not send a single bill to the governor’s desk that would help homeless and abused companion animals. So for the next year, at least, cats and dogs that could have been removed from unsafe environments are on their own. Abusers who engage in animal fighting and other forms of cruelty will continue to receive lighter penalties. New Yorkers will still have to choose between insurance and their pets. And with SARA gathering dust, animal control pounds will continue to kill healthy cats and dogs who may have otherwise been rescued.
When New York politicians call kittens and puppies the last bastion of bipartisanship, they speak the truth. Both sides have agreed to do as little as they can get away with.
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