Tickets are still available for no-kill animal shelter advocate Nathan Winograd’s seminar Saturday. The California-based Winograd will present his “Building a No Kill Community” workshop at the South Texas College of Law, 1303 San Jacinto Street. Tickets are available at www.NoKillHouston.org for $14.99, or $20 at the door. (It runs from 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m., so make sure to bring some coffee).
Winograd, former head of the Tompkins County (New York) SPCA and author of Redemption:The Myth of Pet Overpopulation, is still in negotiations with the city of Houston over a deal to assess the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care.
This might be a good time for Hair Balls to point out that the still-unsigned contract between Winograd and the city contains Winograd’s request to review shelter documents prior to his assessment. We can only hope that the city will be more forthcoming with Winograd than it has been with Houston residents who have filed numerous public-records requests this year.
The city appears to respond automatically by asking a state Attorney
General’s opinion over whether the information is truly public. The
opinion requests that Hair Balls have seen don’t even bother to point
out why the city believes the information isn’t public; the city’s
legal experts just use the see-what-sticks approach by listing all the
exceptions included in the public information section of the Texas
Government Code. (Apparently, the city of Houston believes all the
lawyers in the AG’s office just aren’t busy enough and need to spend an
inordinate amount of time dealing with an influx of questions over one
public facility in one city; perhaps the AG’s office should just set up
it’s own BARC unit).
It all leaves Hair Balls a bit pizzled: if the city believes the bulk
of any relevant information isn’t public, Hair Balls isn’t exactly sure
how Winograd – whose assessment fee will be covered by private
donations – will be able to conduct a worthwhile inspection.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2009.
