Vermont’s statewide program to subsidize spay and neuter surgeries for pets of low-income Vermonters went temporarily on hold this year due to lack of funds.
As VTDigger reported Sunday, the Vermont Spay Neuter Incentive Program (VSNIP), was not distributing new vouchers this summer for spay and neuter operations to low income Vermonters. The stoppage was due to the program outspending its revenue, which is generated from the dog licensing fees that owners pay when registering dogs with local governments.
“More vouchers were issued in fiscal year 2013 than there was funding for,” said Pamela Krausz, who administered the program before the state took it over last year. “So essentially, the VSNIP program spent two years’ worth of funding in a year.”
But Krausz said the overspending wasn’t due to misused funds – the state simply sponsored more operations in fiscal year 2013 than there was money for.
“The same number of animals were done,” she said. “It was just that they were all done in one year versus spread out over two years.”
Programs like VSNIP exist all over the country, and advocates say they succeed in reducing intakes at animal shelters and therefore driving down the number of animals that shelters have to euthanize.
When Krausz’s contract expired last year, the state’s Department for Children and Families took over the program. Now dealing with a number of problems in its Family Services department, it’s unclear how much capacity DCF has to fix yet another troubled service.
But Mary Taylor, the executive director of the Central Vermont Humane Society and president of the Vermont Humane Federation, said the program is important.
“The state program makes a huge amount of difference for that part of the population that is low income,” she said, “and it would be very hard for us [at animal shelters] to do that program because there are income guidelines, so there’s a big administrative piece to it.”
"The amount of funds going into the program versus the demand never meet up end-to-end." - Mary Taylor, Vermont Humane Federation
Taylor said administrative costs for the program shrank under state control – in part, she said, because DCF already has access to some of the information needed to determine a pet owner’s eligibility.
But what DCF can’t do, she said, is control a market in which demand is increasing and the cost of the surgeries the program provides is rising.
“The amount of funds going into the program versus the demand never meet up end-to-end,” she said.
The good news for low-income Vermonters is that there are some private services that are doing low-cost spay and neuter operations. Taylor points to Vermont Companion Animal Neutering (Vermont CAN), a program operated by Krausz.
That is based in Middlesex, but Taylor and Krausz advised Vermonters to call their local animal shelter or programs like Vermont CAN to see what options they may have locally.
Vermont CAN – operating on grant money from Petsmart Charities – is offering free spays and neuters for cats in the Northeast Kingdom and, in February, $20 spays for cats.
Correction 10:50 a.m. Dec. 2, 2014 An earlier version of this story said VSNIP was currently on hold. According to Sean Brown, deputy commissioner at DCF, VSNIP has been operational since September.
"It was temporarily shut down until revenues caught up," he said, "but it started operating again in September."
