Rep. Bryan Cutler
A local legislator says the recent pet bird seizure controversy bodes well for his bill that would set limits on searches and vehicle stops by Pennsylvania Game Commission officers.
State Rep. Bryan Cutler of Peach Bottom is the author of House Bill 181, introduced last year. The bill has unanimously passed both the House and Senate Game and Fisheries committees and has been in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Cutler said he recently was informed by Senate officials that the bill would be moving out of committee for a full vote. He said that information was passed to him before the confiscation of a pet house finch kept by an Elizabethtown woman who had saved it.
But the recent controversy, he said, "makes it pertinent again. I think it was probably going to move anyway. But I think this will certainly draw attention back to some of the other issues out there, like legal thresholds for stopping and searching someone."
Cutler's bill grew out of a failed attempt by former state Sen. Gibson Armstrong of Refton to strip deputy wildlife conservation officers of many of their law-enforcement powers.
Armstrong sought the change in July 2008, several months after one of his sons had an encounter with a deputy game warden on a farm the Armstrong family owned in York County.
Armstrong's legislation went nowhere.
Cutler said Armstrong went too far, but he said sportsmen were concerned about vague language in the Game and Wildlife Code that outlines law enforcement procedures pertaining to vehicle stops and searches.
Both the Game Commission and Cutler have said that the agency follows Constitutional guidelines used by police agencies. But Cutler's bill would amend the game code to clearly state that hunters could be stopped only with reasonable suspicion and that vehicles could be stopped and searched only with reasonable cause.
"There have been cases where evidence was suppressed because it was improperly taken. That happens, but their statute never reflected what those standards are," Cutler said Tuesday during a break between state budget sessions.
The Game Commission helped draft the language in Cutler's bill.
The bill has the support of the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Rifle Association, Allegheny County Sportsmen's League, Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania and others.
Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser did not return e-mails to him on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The bird case will likely dominate the public comment period at the Game Commission's quarterly meeting Monday and Tuesday in Harrisburg.
Game commissioners will be briefed on the case Sunday night by agency executive director Carl Roe.
Protesters, who think the agency should not have taken the bird from Pati Mattrick even though it's against the law to keep protected wildlife as pets, plan to picket outside the agency Monday morning and to speak at the meeting.
Mattrick said Wednesday that she plans to attend and make a statement to the game commissioners.
"I've resigned myself that I'll never see Stormy again," she said. "My goal is to see things change.
"It was just unacceptable and it was just unnecessary to treat me the way they did.
"I think there should be some stipulations in the law but I understand that would encourage people to do the same thing I did, and I understand that.
"I don't like the fact that they don't seem to have to answer to anybody."