Recently I have received dozens of letters decrying the Governor's plan to remove a $20 surcharge being paid to Maine by pet food manufacturers. It's $20 per year on each product being sold. Not $20 per truckload, or $20 per case - just one charge of $20 per product. And there's more: home-based pet food makers are exempt. This modest surcharge helps pay for spaying an neutering of unwanted pets, and it's a contributor to the fact that we are among the states with the lowest incidences of euthanasia. I am opposed to this proposal to provide "tax relief" to an industry that is clearly not having any difficulty in selling its products here.
When you buy a car battery or tires you pay a fee to help offset the environmental costs. My clumsy analogy is that un-spayed / neutered animals are an environmental side effect to domestic pets, and a robust (and easily funded) spay and neuter program is both humane and economical. I am the happy owner of a succession of shelter cats. Maine's animal shelter system has done a great deal to manage the problem of unwanted pets - our very low rate of euthanasia is almost certainly the result of the Help Fix Me program.
I am very pleased to report that as of yesterday, the Agriculture Committee voted unanimously to drop this proposal from the budget. It's not dead yet, but it's been dealt, I am happy to say, a severe blow. You could say it's been spayed.
Mr. Johnson, pictured above, doesn't vote and in general has a very limited interest in public policy. But even he, who deals more directly with this issue than anyone else in our household, surely could not fail to find appropriateness in this basic mechanism to help solve a very specific problem
When you buy a car battery or tires you pay a fee to help offset the environmental costs. My clumsy analogy is that un-spayed / neutered animals are an environmental side effect to domestic pets, and a robust (and easily funded) spay and neuter program is both humane and economical. I am the happy owner of a succession of shelter cats. Maine's animal shelter system has done a great deal to manage the problem of unwanted pets - our very low rate of euthanasia is almost certainly the result of the Help Fix Me program.
I am very pleased to report that as of yesterday, the Agriculture Committee voted unanimously to drop this proposal from the budget. It's not dead yet, but it's been dealt, I am happy to say, a severe blow. You could say it's been spayed.
Mr. Johnson, pictured above, doesn't vote and in general has a very limited interest in public policy. But even he, who deals more directly with this issue than anyone else in our household, surely could not fail to find appropriateness in this basic mechanism to help solve a very specific problem
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