Kasich takes heat in aftermath of killings of exotic animals

By Alan Johnson

Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

Gov. John Kasich and his aides spent much of Wednesday explaining why he allowed an executive order to lapse that could have forced Terry Thompson to give up his private menagerie.

“If there’s some way I could’ve prevented it, I would,” Kasich said after a business event in Canton. “But what we have to do is move forward and make sure we can clearly limit anything like this in the future.”

But Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive officer of the Humane Society of the United States, said the Zanesville animal situation could have been prevented had Kasich extended and enforced an exotic-animals ban signed by former Gov. Ted Strickland just before leaving office in January. The ban was the last component of an animal-welfare deal worked out by Strickland, the Humane Society, Ohio Farm Bureau and others.

Bill Damschroder, chief legal counsel for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources — the agency that would have enforced the animal order — said he determined that it “exceeded the agency’s authority.”

But others questioned the Kasich administration’s reasoning.

Dan Kobil, a constitutional law expert at Capital University, said decisions by the Ohio Supreme Court indicate that it is “at least strongly arguable that the governor has authority to issue an executive order to direct the ODNR to make rules protecting the state’s property ... from exotic animals.”

Under Ohio law, the governor is granted broad executive authority, including the power to issue executive orders.

Strickland’s order did not ban ownership overall but required owners to register exotic animals with the state by May 1. It also prohibited anyone “convicted of an offense involving the abuse or neglect of any animal” from owning exotic animals.

Thompson had an animal cruelty and two other related convictions in 2005.

In an interview with The Dispatch, Strickland said his order was ‘a common-sense compromise... We tried to be fair in certain grandfather provisions. But someone with a record like this man was not intended to have these animals.

“What’s happened is tragic and unfortunate. I don’t know why the order wasn’t extended. ... Maybe we can learn from this incident....”

Janetta King, who was Strickland’s policy director, disputed the claim that the executive order was unenforceable, saying state law specifically gives the Ohio Department of Natural Resources “very broad authority to regulate wild animals.”

“This is unbelievable that this even existed, and what’s hard for me to understand is why Ohio over time didn’t deal with this, but we’ll deal with it now,” she said.

“But we want to do it the right way. We don’t want to misstep and then we come back and have somebody in some other part of Ohio release an animal because they’re told they have to register and there’s going to be a big fine,” she added.

During a meeting in Columbus Wednesday with editors from Dix Newspapers, Kasich said the state will move forward with legislation limiting the sale and ownership of exotic animals, but not before making sure the resulting regulations will have the desired effect.

“I don’t like the idea of these auctions,” the governor said. “I’d like to

find out how we can figure out what’s here, how we do registration.”

He added, “Clearly we need tougher laws. And we’ll deal with it in a comprehensive way.”

The auctions he referred to regularly sell livestock and other animals. A website for the busy Mount Hope Auction in Holmes County, has sales scheduled Nov. 4-5 where buffalo, camels, zebras, kangaroos, wallabies, llamas, alpacas, ostriches and emus will be auctioned.

Ohio is one of a handful of states with no rules or regulations on private ownership of non-native wild animals. Thompson’s personal collection was not inspected or given a permit by the state or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees animal breeders and exhibitors. Thompson was neither.

“One of the reasons we advocated for a ban was that these things never end well for the animals,” Pacelle said. “In this case, a lot of animal suffering could have been prevented.”

Dispatch Senior Editor Joe Hallett, Dispatch reporter Joe Vardon and Vindicator correspondent Marc Kovac contributed to this story.