Politics on the Hudson

   Gov. David Paterson signed eight bills Friday to improve children’s health and safety and low-income pregnant women’s acccess to health care, and to prohibit euthanizing animals by any method other than lethal injection.

   Paterson vetoed two bills that would have cost taxpayers more than $1 billion. They would have required the state to print and distribute statewide and regional guides to farms and other agriculturally significant tourist destinations and would have required an additional level of public input before closing a hospital.  

   Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, said she sponsored the euthanasia legislation because there is a wide disparity among shelters, animal clinics and veterinary hospitals about the proper application of euthanasia.

   The new law, which takes effect in a year, makes it illegal for anyone other than a certified euthanasia technician, veterinarian or veterinary technician to perform intracardiac euthanasia. Animals will have to be heavily sedated, anesthetized or comatose when the injection is administered. Animal gas chambers have to be dismantled within 90 days of the law’s enactment.

   “When my veterinarian told me that euthanasia was not always a gentle way for animals to die, in fact, that if it is applied incorrectly, it could lead to excrutiating pain in their final minutes of life, I knew we had to do something to change the legislation,” Paulin said in a statement.

   Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer, D-Mamaroneck, was the bill’s Senate sponsor.

   Other bills signed by Paterson will:

  —Amend the murder statute to address the murder of a child younger than 14 in an “especially cruel and wanton manner” and authorize a life sentence without parole. The legislation is known as Nixzmary’s Law after Nixzmary Brown, a 7-year-old who was beaten to death by her mother and stepfather.  

   —Ensure that all low-income pregnant women, even those whose incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid, have access to comprehensive pre-natal care at no additional cost to the state.  

  —Increase the penalty against taxi and car-service drivers who solicit passengers at airports but are not licensed to do so.

  —Increase the penalty against landlords who harass tenants in order to obtain vacancy notices from them. 

  —Clarify that aggravated sexual abuse statutes cover insertions into the anus or rectum of a victim.

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