[Vision2020] Dogfighting Bill Gains Support

Tom Hansen thansen at moscow.com
Wed Aug 22 06:39:10 PDT 2007


>From today's (August 22, 2007) Spokesman Review with special thanks and
appreciation to Rep. Tom Trail -

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Dogfighting bill gains support
Case renews call for felony status in Idaho
Betsy Z. Russell 
Staff writer
August 22, 2007

BOISE - After three years, Rep. Tom Trail was about ready to give up. Three
sessions in a row, Idaho legislators were asked to make dogfighting a
felony, and three times the bill was killed in committee.

Last year, Trail, R-Moscow, couldn't even get his bill introduced in the
committee he chairs, the House Agriculture Committee.

But now, with pro football player Michael Vick's expected guilty plea to
federal conspiracy charges, a national spotlight has been shining on the
cruelties associated with dogfighting and the fact that Idaho is one of just
two states, along with Wyoming, that lacks felony penalties.

Now, the bill's back on. Gov. Butch Otter came out in favor of the idea
earlier this month. Trail now has an array of co-sponsors, and he's being
flooded with calls and e-mails in favor of the bill. "I'd say nine-tenths of
my e-mail, phone calls and mail all revolve around this issue," he said.

Rep. Marge Chadderdon, R-Coeur d'Alene, is co-sponsoring the bill with
Trail, along with Rep. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, Rep. Donna Pence,
D-Gooding, and Sen. Brad Little, R-Emmett.

Chadderdon said she's received about 10,000 individual petitions backing the
bill.

"Just the other day, I ran into a lady in the store; she said, 'I certainly
hope you can do something about it this year. We send you there to make laws
- what's the matter?'" Chadderdon said.

At committee hearings on the bill in 2005 and 2006, testimony in favor of
felony penalties for dogfighting came from law enforcement, prosecutors,
animal lovers and others. But lobbyists for agricultural groups, including
the Idaho Farm Bureau, the Idaho Wool Growers and the Idaho Cattle
Association, spoke against the bill. They suggested that Idaho's current
misdemeanor penalties are sufficient, and worried that the bill could affect
working dogs on ranches.

Jeff Rosenthal, a Boise veterinarian and director of the Idaho Humane
Society, which operates the state's largest animal shelter in Boise, said,
"There's been a learning process in the last three years. . I think the
likelihood of passing a bill that focuses on dogfighting is extremely high,
and I think we'll get bipartisan support, and I would predict that we'll
also have either the support or the neutrality of a lot of the groups that
have been concerned about it in the past, which are largely agricultural
groups."

Trail said definitions in the bill have been refined to ensure they target
only dogfighting operations.

Throughout his efforts in past years, Trail said, "Nobody came out in strong
support of dogfighting in Idaho."

Rep. Phil Hart, R-Athol, made the successful motion to kill the bill in the
House Judiciary Committee in 2005. Hart said he was concerned about
overloading Idaho's prisons by creating another felony crime. "I would have
that same concern" again, he said. "I think we have to look at how we're
going to use our prisons, and what types of crimes we have already
incarcerated people for, and I think we have to sort of manage the number of
beds appropriately as we consider which crimes are the more significant ones
that we ought to be incarcerating people for."

He also questioned why prosecutions have been rare or nonexistent under
Idaho's current misdemeanor law. "Why is that not being enforced? Is it a
problem? Do we really need to increase it from a misdemeanor to a felony?"
Hart asked.

Backers of the legislation say the lack of felony penalties makes
prosecution a lesser priority in Idaho. Most information about dogfighting
in Idaho has come anecdotally from local animal protection workers who've
found injured dogs that show evidence of being used in fighting.

In one such example, in February 2006, Priest River Pet Rescue found a
severely wounded pit bull near Priest River with a broken leg, a gaping
wound through its lip and mouth, and bite scars covering its body.

Rosenthal said, "What I'm hearing in the grapevine is that everybody is very
supportive of the basic concept that we should have tougher penalties and
try to prevent this kind of activity from occurring in Idaho. We definitely
don't want to be seen as some type of haven for this type of behavior."

He added, "I'm very confident. I think they're going to do the right thing
this year."

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Don't tell me why I can't.
Show me how I can."

- Author Unknown 




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