Apr 26, 2022 5 min read

Nothing in state government is simple.

Not even a piece of legislation that would prohibit pet stores from selling dogs that come from puppy mills. As Mike Wereschagin of The Caucus noted, “Being anti-puppy-mill is about the easiest gimme in politics.”

The Humane Society of the United States defines a puppy mill as “an inhumane high-volume dog breeding facility that churns out puppies for profit, ignoring the needs of the pups and their mothers.” They are as horrible as they sound, and Lancaster County sadly is known for them.

No one should be making money off of the irresponsible breeding of cats, rabbits or dogs, and treating them as mere commodities to bring in profits.

Apparently, a lot of people agree with that in principle. But Victoria’s Law, which would seek to eliminate a primary revenue stream for puppy mill operators, remains stuck in the state Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Why? Why is it dead?” animal welfare advocate Grace Kelly Herbert asked. “It’s a very popular bill… and it’s just kind of sitting on the sidelines.”

That is because of the idiosyncrasies of the state Legislature.

As Wereschagin explained, a rules structure is in place in Harrisburg that “gives legislative leaders and committee chairs nearly unfettered ability to control the legislative agenda.”

Kelly Herbert’s question – “Why?” – is one we’ve asked many times about the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Why is it so bloated and so ineffective? Why are its members compensated so generously when they’re only nominally full-time? Why do the same people keep getting rewarded with reelection when they fail repeatedly to solve the commonwealth’s problems?

The whys are many; the answers, few.

In this instance, lawmakers say they are trying to address concerns raised by veterinarians, responsible breeders and the American Kennel Club “because I don’t think they want (puppy mills) operating in Pennsylvania either,” Sen. Phillips-Hill, R-York County, said.

More fundamentally, though, there are operational issues that delay good legislation.

In January 2021, lawmakers voted to adopt the rules “that would govern how the chambers operate for the next two years,” Wereschagin explained. “Those rules give enormous power to a small group of legislative leaders. They can single-handedly set the legislative agenda, fast-track favored bills and bury legislation, even if it has the support of a majority of the 203-member House and 50-seat Senate.”

As Carol Kuniholm, co-founder of Fair Districts PA, noted at a recent event in Harrisburg, “Year after year, bills with broad, bipartisan support are blocked by committee chairs and legislative leaders.”

Fair Districts PA has worked tirelessly since 2016 to reform the way the commonwealth handles redistricting. “It quickly became clear that the obstacles to reform were as much internal as external,” Wereschagin noted. “Party leaders, intent on maintaining control over the often-unwieldy process of passing laws through the country’s largest full-time state legislature, wrote operating rules that cement their primacy.”

And, he pointed out, there is no feasible way for rank-and-file lawmakers to force a vote on even the most popular bills.

“There are no mechanisms in place to ensure all legislators have a say in what bills are enacted, and no rules in place to ensure bipartisan solutions get a vote,” Kuniholm said. “So far, in this Legislature, no bills introduced by the minority party have gotten a vote on the House floor. Only one in the Senate was given a final vote.”

The minority party inside the state Capitol is actually the majority party in the state. Democrats long have outnumbered Republicans in Pennsylvania, but because of gerrymandering and structural advantages, Republicans have controlled the state Legislature.

So Republican leaders in the Legislature also control the legislative agenda.

As Wereschagin reported, “Fair Districts PA and the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters want lawmakers to change their chambers’ operating rules to, among other things, require that every bill get at least a hearing, allow rank-and-file members to vote to add a bill to their committees’ agendas, require committee chair selections to be approved by floor votes and give the minority party more say in the process.”

We endorse these proposals. We’d endorse them whichever party was in power in Harrisburg, in the interest of fairness.

But fairness is a noble concept and therefore generally not embraced by politicians.

One issue holding up Victoria’s Law is the lack of resources available to enforce the laws already on the books.

State Senate Judiciary Committee chairwoman Lisa Baker, a Luzerne County Republican, told Wereschagin that she’s had both rescue and purebred dogs, and has been “a supporter and protector of animals throughout my career.”

But before proceeding with Victoria’s Law, Baker wants the input of a task force that’s being created to study the state’s animal-welfare laws and enforcement regime. (Paralysis by analysis is real in Harrisburg.)

Baker said there’s not much point in adding a new law when the agencies tasked with enforcing such laws are so underfunded they can’t handle their workload as it is. “The key to ridding Pennsylvania of puppy mills is robust enforcement,” Baker said.

We couldn’t agree more.

But we’re a bit puzzled as to why the underfunding of enforcement agencies is raised in this context as if state lawmakers weren’t the ones who could do something about it.

Last July, Spotlight PA reported that the Pennsylvania Legislature “departed for the summer without voting on bills that would have raised dog licensing fees from $6.50 to $10 per year, an increase advocates say is critical to address insufficient staffing and a dire funding shortfall within the state’s Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement.”

This should surprise no one: That bill, too, remains stuck in committee.

If only there were a way to get it unstuck.