No on AB 1634

A Disaster Waiting to Happen for California's Family Pets

Assembly Bill 1634 will force nearly all family dogs and cats in California to be surgically sterilized by the time they are six months old.

Authored by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, AB 1634 will create a convoluted maze of government permits, hefty fees and punitive fines that will not decrease animal shelter populations or euthanasia rates. It will, however, take scarce funds from caring for animals to pay for an overreaching bureaucracy that will be expensive to administer, impossible to enforce, and is guaranteed to fail.

“Enormous Fiscal Burden” = 2¢ a Day

Animal shelters take in lost, stray, abandoned and surrendered animals; provide food, shelter and veterinary care; offer low-cost spay/neutering; investigate animal cruelty; rescue animals from dangerous or abusive situations; track and control rabies; inspect facilities that sell, groom and kennel pets; pick up dead or injured wildlife; humanely euthanize sick, injured, diseased, aggressive, old and suffering animals; and place homeless pets with adoptive families.

For these invaluable services, Californians pay less than 2¢ a day – more taxes are spent on city golf courses than on city animal shelters. Yet, Assemblyman Levine and the bill's supporters claim: “The financial costs to taxpayers are extremely high” and an “enormous fiscal burden.”

According to Levine, AB 1634 will save taxpayers “$200 million a year.” The only way to cut $200 million from annual funding of $250 million for animal care is to layoff workers and close down the majority of community shelters across California.

Animal care shelters play a vital role in our society, and – despite what backers of AB 1634 believe – we have a moral obligation to fully fund them.

Ask a Veterinarian

The decision to perform a serious surgical procedure on a family pet should be a choice made by pet owners in consultation with their veterinarians – not dictated by a one-size-fits-all statewide mandate and overseen by a government bureaucracy.
The California Veterinary Medical Association agrees, and does not support AB 1634.

Ignore the Solution / Avoid the Problem

There are no state funds in AB 1634 to pay for low-cost spay and neuter services for low-income families or seniors. There are no funds to pay for education or outreach programs for pet owners. There are no funds to pay for increased enforcement of leash laws. All these programs have proven successful and are responsible for reducing California shelter populations by 57% and euthanasia rates by 75% over the last 30 years.

Feral cats account for more than half of all animals entering local shelters and most will end up euthanized. AB 1634 will have no impact on unowned animals and does nothing to address the feral cat population. Instead, the bill targets owned cats – more than 90% of which are already spayed or neutered.

Taking Failure to a Whole New Level: Statewide

AB 1634 is modeled after a similar law in Santa Cruz County where mandatory spay/neuter was enacted in 1995. Since then, the County’s animal control expenses have more than doubled – up 109%. And while shelter intakes were reduced by 22%, the statewide average reduction was 26%.
In Monterey County, MD, more than 10,000 licenses for unaltered pets were issued the year before mandatory spay/neuter was adopted, and only 743 licenses the year after it took effect. The law has since been repealed.
In the year since the City of Los Angeles enacted a mandatory spay/neuter law, the dog and cat shelter population has gone up for the first time, reversing a 5-year downward trend. Shelter expenses have also increased.
There is not one local jurisdiction in the nation with a mandatory spay/neuter law that has seen a drop in shelter expenses and a reduction in intakes and euthanasia rates greater than their state average.

Say Goodbye to Maddie’s Fund, the Nation’s Largest Pet-Rescue Foundation

From Richard Avanzino, President of Maddie’s Fund:
“If AB 1634 does pass, it could impact Maddie’s support of spay/neuter programs in California. Since our inception, Maddie’s Fund has had a policy of not funding government mandated programs. This policy applies to mandatory spay/neuter laws, as well as to other requirements imposed by federal, state and local legislation.”

Maddie's Fund has distributed more than $10 million in grants to California, including:

$7.9 million – CVMA Feral Cat Altering Program resulted in the spay/neutering of 170,440 feral cats in California.
$468,000 – Pet Rescue Project in Lodi, which reached 100% of its spay/neuter goals and adoption guarantees for all healthy shelter animals.
$1 million – Founded the UC Davis Shelter Medicine Program, the first in the nation for training animal shelter veterinarians.

Some of the People, Some of the Time

Proponents of AB 1634 are deceiving state legislators, misleading the media, and betraying well-intentioned supporters through their use of misinformation, erroneous data, phony statistics, and emotional manipulation. The wheels are about to fall off AB 1634 as their questionable claims and tactics are exposed in testimony to be heard in the Senate Local Government Committee on July 11.