With the recent spate of dog attacks, Council District D representative Cynthia Hedge-Morrell says the incoming city council needs to pass laws to combat the problem. She plans on introducing a spaying and neutering ordinance later this year, and she will also propose a law requiring owners of certain dangerous breeds, including pit bulls, to cage the dogs in kennels.

“You can’t just keep sticking your head in the sand, and saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to offend this person,’ or ‘I’m going to offend that person.’”

It’s not the first time Hedge-Morrell has tackled the issue.

After a pit bull attack in 2008, Hedge-Morrell explored proposing an ordinance outlawing the breed in Orleans Parish. She says, however, the city’s law department told her the proposed legislation could be legally challenged in court, so the council rep collaborated with Louisiana SPCA director Ana Zorrilla on a different approach. Because unneutered, non-spayed, or “intact” dogs, are 2.6 times more likely to attack than neutered animals, Hedge-Morrell’s ordinance would have required owners to have their dogs fixed, or buy a breeder’s permit.

Hedge-Morrell introduced the legislation to the council in September 2009, and she says she had the necessary four votes to pass the legislation.

“Until the American Kennel Club came after me,” Hedge-Morrell says.

Hedge-Morrell says after the AKC, breeders and other associations began a letter-writing campaign protesting the legislation, she withdrew the ordinance for consideration because there wasn’t enough council support to pass it. Hedge-Morrell still thinks it was a good bill because the fees and fines generated by the ordinance would have gone to the LASPCA to assist with animal control: overpopulation, random breeding and violent attacks. She says the city does not currently require breeders to hold permits.

“So if you’re a professional breeder we don’t tax you,” Hedge-Morrell says. “If you’re a backyard breeder, we don’t tax you.”

Without a dedicated funding stream for animal control — under budgetary constraints, the city couldn’t pay the LASPCA for services in the last two months of 2009 — Hedge-Morrell says unwanted and intact dogs will continue to roam the streets and attacks will continue.

Ken Foster, local author (Dogs Who I Have Met: And the People They Found) who started the Sula Foundation, dedicated to the support of responsible pit bull ownership, says dog attacks happen because of abusive and neglectful owners, not because of the dog’s breed. He says the media unfairly hypes pit bulls as vicious animals, and that other dogs can also attack.

“If someone’s bitten by a pit bull, it’s reported by 500 media outlets,” Foster says. “But if somebody is bitten really bad by a black lab or a golden retriever, it’ll be reported maybe in the local paper and that’s all.”

Foster says he would like more low cost spaying and neutering options available to dog owners, but he’s unsure a spaying and neutering law would be effective.

“We just had two months in which the city refused to pay for animal control, so there was no animal control,” Foster says. “Now we’re trying to put in a mandatory spaying and neutering law that will be enforced, how?”

Gambit’s Clancy DuBos thanking Mayor Nagin? And in a press release from the Mayor’s Office of Communications, no less?

In an unlikely year that’s seen pigs fly, hell freeze over and America join the commies, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the mayor’s spinners dug deep for this one:

“All of [sic] just said, ‘Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor,’” said Clancy DuBos, editor of Gambit Weekly. “That was his defining moment right after Katrina because he expressed very bluntly the frustrations of everybody — black, white, Democratic, Republican — all New Orleanians who were fed up with the lack of federal response.”

It’s taken from a CNN profile on Nagin and is part of the network’s series “Revealed,” which the press release reminds us is, “a program that gets under the skin of the world’s brilliant thinkers, creative champions and inspirational leaders.”

Not that many would disagree with DuBos’s assessment of Nagin’s “Now get off your asses and do something” September 2005 radio interview calling for federal aid for our drowning city.

But that was 2005, and the DuBos quote seems a little stale for cherry picking. While the mayor’s press office isn’t Fox News, the press release needs a little balance. How about DuBos’s take on the end of Nagin’s term?

“What measure of relief he’s feeling pales in comparison to the relief that the citizens are feeling.”

That’s better. Now we can focus on the important stuff.

Yesterday was a good day for moving forward on pump stations, but it might not turn out so well for New Orleans taxpayers.

While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and state and local officials signed an agreement Tuesday and gave a green light for constructing permanent pump stations at the three Lake Pontchartrain outfall canals, paying for the maintenance and operation of the stations remains a concern.

Orleans Sewerage and Water Board will be responsible for operation and maintenance costs, estimated at $10 million annually by S&WB director Marcia St. Martin, according to the Corps’ Col. Robert Sinkler.  His comments came during a New Orleans City Council meeting in December, and the council’s response wasn’t encouraging:

“They’re already broke,” Councilwoman Shelley Midura, adding it didn’t seem fair to place the burden on S&WB.

Councilmember At-Large Arnie Fielkow told Sinkler that SW&B does not have an additional $10 million in its budget to accommodate the maintenance and operation costs. Fielkow, who sits on the board for SW&B, said the money would have to be raised through a property tax millage increase.

The city’s permitting system is working and available to the public. In a story first broken by The Lens, the technology vendor, Accela Inc., that supplies the system for the city’s Office of Safety and Permits shut it down on Monday because the city failed to pay the company. The system allows contractors and residents to file for permits online and check on their status, and provides an automated format for office staff.

Accela spokesperson Paul Davis said for months the company had repeatedly warned the Nagin administration it would be forced to turn off the system because of back payments. Administration officials finally got the message late Thursday evening.

“We have just received full payment from the city for all outstanding funds for hosting and maintenance fees,” Davis said. He added that Accela has hundreds of contracts with municipalities, and this was the first time it had shut off services because the customer didn’t pay.

“I hope this is the end of it,” said New Orleans Coroner Dr. Frank Minyard today when he declared Jannie Burgess’s death unclassified and its cause undetermined. Burgess died at Memorial Medical Center in the days following Hurricane Katrina when the hospital was flooded and without power. Before dying, Burgess was injected with morphine seven times, but the coroner said the 79-year-old patient was extremely ill — suffering from kidney and liver failure.

“We don’t feel that has contributed to her death,” Minyard said regarding the injections. “We feel it may have some minor contribution.” Minyard added that death from a morphine overdose usually occurs immediately, but Burgess died three hours later.

This death and others lead to an investigation and eventual second-degree murder charges against Memorial Medical Center’s Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses. Then Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti accused Pou and the nurses of killing as many as nine patients, but in July 2007, a grand jury decided not to pursue the charges.

The controversy surrounding the Memorial deaths resurfaced late last year after an article by ProPublica reporter and medical doctor Sheri Fink. In Fink’s story, Dr. Ewing Cook, a senior physician at the hospital, admitted to hastening Burgess’s death: “I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the floor.”

As part of his investigation, Minyard said he tried to interview Cook, but his attorney, Ralph Capitelli, advised against it.