The Senate overhaul of the dog breeders law adopted by voters in November has been approved and sent to the House.
Thirteen Senators whose voters supported Proposition B in November voted against the revision although some of them acknowledged the proposition has several flaws. But five senators from districts that supported the proposition last year have supported the changes.
One senator voting against the revision, John Lamping of Clayton nonetheless expressed misgivings about the process that put the matter on the ballot and got the measure passed. “I think it’s a very dangerous way to legislate,” he said.
The revision bill’s sponsor, Michael Parson of Bolivar, agrees legislating by propositions backed by millions of dollars from outside the state is a poor way to make law. Pointing to a slogan carved in a wall of the senate reading, “Free and fair discussion will ever be found the firmest friend of truth,” Parson told his colleagues, “I don’t think six million dollar initiative petitions fit in that category.”
If the bill makes it through the legislature and is signed by the governor, it becomes effective August 28th, about two months before Proposition B would have become effective. An emergency clause that would have made the bill effective as soon as the governor signed it failed to get the needed two-thirds vote.
The Humane Society of the United States, the organization that ran the campaign last year, accuses of the senate of “gutting” the dog breeders law.
Listen to the debate Approx 45 minutes mp3
YEAS—Senators Brown Callahan Crowell Dixon Engler Goodman Kehoe Lager Mayer Munzlinger Nieves Parson Pearce Purgason Richard Rupp
Schaaf Schaefer Stouffer Wasson—20
NAYS—Senators Chappelle-Nadal Cunningham Curls Dempsey Green Justus Keaveny Kraus Lamping Lembke McKenna Ridgeway Schmitt Wright-Jones—14
