Animal Welfare Professionals

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Hello, we are a municipal shelter and have been told by our legal team that it is acceptable to turn over to the citizen requesting the information other citizens private information (home addresses and phone numbers) for everyone that has requested help through a specific program of ours.  What are others similar experience with public information requests? This could easily lead to a lack of trust in seeking city services. 

#LawsandPublicPolicy

Here in Florida we were, up until very recently, required to give out the address/phone number upon request of anyone who adopted, rescued or pulled an animal from our shelter.  This was due to the wording in our public records law (Florida's Government in the Sunshine Law).  As a municipal shelter this caused us a lot of grief, especially when we seized animals and later adopted them out and the former owners would harass the new owners.  But fortunately as of July 1st, 2024 we now have House Bill 273 signed off by the governor.  This bill states: "providing an exemption from public records requirements for records containing certain information pertaining to persons with legal custody of an animal from an animal shelter or animal control agency operated by a humane society or a local government".

In many ways this has made life easier, but one unforeseen complication has been that when a high profile animal is pulled by a rescue, and the public wants to contribute money to its care, we can't provide the name of the facility or rescue.  Instead, we call the rescue and relay  the message about a potential donor and let them decide whether they want to go public with the rescue pull.  So far they always do.

Cheers,

Jan 

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Jan Steele
Director
Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control
FL
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Hi. I worked for animal control in Washington, DC until 2 years ago. When people wanted to make a FOIA request about a case, we (as contractors) directed them to the city's FOIA officer, who would literally give them the entire PetPoint case report, which included the personal information of all the parties involved. Members of the public could also request any shelter record. We officers had opinions about this, but that's how it was. However, in DC animal neglect and cruelty cases are handled a different contract and with different funding, so those records are much more private. I have no idea what would happen if someone tried to FOIA information from community programs funded by the contract. 

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James Pawlowicz
Humane Rescue Alliance
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