NY Affiliates Phone Conference of Saturday December 19th makes plans for 2010

The New York Chapter of the League of Humane Voters (LOHV) had its last phone conference of 2009 with eight heads of LOHV-NYS Affiliates participating.  The main focus was on planning our activities for the upcoming legislative session and the LOHV Legislative Breakfast on March 17^th in Albany. 
The Legislative Breakfast is an annual event to which LOHV invites all state legislators. The breakfast is, of course, vegan. It gives the legislators a chance to be introduced to our bills for the session, and lets them know we’re counting on their support.
After the breakfast we meet with the heads of the legislative committees that are relevant to our bills in the Assembly and the Senate, as well as meeting the leadership of the Assembly and the Senate to solicit their support in the coming session.
Any AR activist from New York State is welcome to join us.
During our phone conference, we decided on several actions that will require different levels of effort on our part:

 1)      Letters of Support – Letters of support for existing bills are letters addressed to the Assembly sponsor, the Senate sponsor, the committee chair of the Assembly committee or committees to which the  Assembly bill was referred, the committee chair of the Senate committee or committees to which the  Senate bill was referred, the Assembly leadership and the Senate leadership.
All told – about six very similar letters state that the League of Humane Voters supports the bill, the reason why it is important to pass the bill and, sometimes, a suggestion for a modification that would strengthen the bill. The bills that we proposed to support were:

a.       Oreo’s Bill – This bill was introduced in the Assembly by Assembly Member Micah Kellner as A09449, and in the Senate by Senator Thomas. Duane as S06412. Both bills will be referred to the Agriculture committees of their respective chambers when the legislature resumes its session on January 6^th.

b.      Vegan/Vegetarian options at school lunch bill – After a conversation with Amie Hamlin of the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food, we found that this bill isn’t quite ready for supporting letters yet.  But we anticipate supporting it once it is finalized.

2)      Continue promoting our pending bills --  in the first half of the 2009/2010 legislative session we introduced or re-introduced three bills in both chambers and were successful in getting all three of out of the EnCon Committee in the Assembly – but they have been held up in the EnCon Committee in the Senate. The bills are:
 

We will attempt to get all of those bill onto the agenda of the first session of the EnCon Committee in 2010.  If that fails, because of the continued stone-walling of the Committee Chair (presumably again Antoine Thompson) we will have to ask the Senate sponsors to ask the Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson to pull the bills out of the EnCon Committee and place them directly into the Rules Committee from which they will be ready for a floor vote.

3)      Target and Find Assembly and Senate Sponsors for  new LOHV bills:
more detailed language for those bills will be forthcoming within the next few weeks

a.   Outlaw Foie Gras production –
Our aim is to request a total ban on Foie Gras production.  We do not want or ask for  a “phase-out” but that may be the only realistically attainable legislation

b.   Mandatory notification of pet-owners of pets found dead with identifying collars. Municipal, county and state highway departments will be required to inform pet owners of their companion animals' death and where the remains are located.

c.    Prohibit Animal experimentation at institutes of higher learning when computer simulation or other technology is available

e.   Mandatory publication of intake and release statistics by shelters that are publicly funded.

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009