King County forcing veterinarians to turn over your animals' medical records

[wakeflood]

elika…I hear what you’re saying but unless it’s just a box with envelopes and a pencil like a self-service campsite, you’re looking at significant effort from someone to manage that payment process.

What’s pretty clear is that something around 75% of pet owners are being supported by the lawful few. That’s unsustainable and needs to change.

People still view pet ownership as a free-standing, low impact thing (it is…for THEM). That’s simply not the case.

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[TanDL]

Some local vet clinics and pet stores do sell Seattle licenses, but the paperwork can be daunting for a business that doesn’t have a lot of administrative staff. People can go online and purchase/renew a license fairly quickly though.

Having dealt with County, State and Federal agencies for awhile now, I can’t imagine they could possibly make any reporting process quick and easy. It’s just not in their bureaucratic nature. I would like to be pleasantly surprised just once, but that hasn’t happened yet.

And I think it would be a very good thing for people who vaccinate their pets to purchase licenses. I don’t think it would be a good thing for the County to require Vet offices to turn over their records so the County can troll those records for information.

Let’s try some non-punitive measures first. What creative ideas can you come up with?

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[wakeflood]

Let’s face it, any system that successfully captures 80% of the things it’s trying to has some combination of carrots and sticks.

Carrots are usually for the folks who were going to do the right thing anyway. Save the occasional “amnesty” scenario that can scoop up a decent portion of the well-intentioned but forgetful or inattentive.

Sticks are for those who generally never meant to comply but get caught out somehow and are forced to comply.

And there’s those that will blow all of it off because the world just doesn’t get that they’re different than the rest of us sheep.

So, the easy part is deciding on carrots (amnesty periods with short term signup or multi-year discounts.) But again, that only nets you maybe another 20%-30%??

But what about the sticks? There isn’t much leverage is there? You need a mechanism that identifies scofflaws before the stick can be applied. That’s not easy. What are the options? Tattling websites? Fine by me. Vets checking central databases and informing folks that they’re being reported? Fine with that too.

Why? Cuz I don’t see many alternatives. Unless you’re happy with getting 40-50% carrying the scofflaws? Call me a tattling meany if you want. I’m tired of responsible folks carrying the load in our “its all about me” society.

Cry me a river.

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[JoB]

if voluntary compliance worked..

we wouldn’t have 70-80% of pet owners ducking out on their responsibility to license their pets..

would we?

did you notice where this originated?

in Bellevue.. where the average homeowner can more than afford to license their pets..

they just think they don’t have to because an underfunded animal control isn’t likely to catch them.

that’s the new normal you know

evaluate whether the risk of getting caught outweighs the pain of compliance…

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[savoirfaire]

Just in case anyone wants to know the specifics of what was discussed back in September before they contact KC:

http://kingcounty.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=1474987&GUID=5F61F022-7F8B-4F9E-BDD8-9CDB54AA444F

There doesn’t seem to be any actual legislation proposed yet.

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[Dawson Junction]

Meanwhile there is a colony of feral cats living in the alley between California and 42nd Ave between SW Dawson St and SW Brandon St with well over a dozen kittens being born each year (still haven’t figured out what happens to them all). But the cats mainly stay in one old guys back yard and he obviously feeds them, as well as other cat people coming around and feeding them. But animal control can’t even be bothered to come check the situation out, or if they have they don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.

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[funkietoo]

In addition to invasion of privacy and other excellent reasons given to shoot this new legislation/law down, this is a transfer of labor from a government entity to a private business entity.

King County Public Health, Council and Regional Animal Services are transferring their labor responsibility to Veterinarians–without paying them a market rate. Administratively, the cost of managing such documentation and enforcement is far more than the $5 per license that some businesses get for selling the license on the County’s behalf.

I understand we need money in order to provide a safety net for animals…but that cost should be on all taxpayers because we all benefit from have municipal animal shelters. Just because one doesn’t have a pet does not mean they don’t benefit.

There are those of us that have always had pets and have never had to utilize the services of our municipal shelters. And yes, all of my pets are licensed because I know it is the main funding sources for caring for animals in our collective community.

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