Nora Marino (attorney) testifies remotely supporting ban

You may begin.

Nora Marino?

Yes, hi, couldn't unmute myself.

Hi, thank you for staying so late.

My name is Nora Marino, I'm an attorney.

I've done a lot of animal rights litigation over the years.

And I have two not-for-profit organizations for animals as well.

One of them, the Legal Action Network for Animals and the Animal Pools Exposure Fund.

I don't want to repeat what's been going on here today.

There's been a lot of great testimony in support of the bill, which I am in support of.

I just want to mention a couple of things really quickly.

First of all, some people have referred to the horse-drawn carriage industry as a transportation industry.

It's not transportation.

It's entertainment.

People don't take horse-drawn carriages to get to work.

They don't take horse-drawn carriages to meet their friend or go to dinner or go to an appointment or go to a job interview.

People take horse-drawn carriages for one reason and one reason only, and it's entertainment.

It is not transportation.

So that needs to be clear.

Also, no industry has ever received this government hand-holding or coddling that this bill is offering the members of the horse-drawn carriage industry who will be seeking other employment.

Many industries fall by the wayside over the year.

over the years.

I mean, think about typewriter repairmen or print news or, I mean, the yellow taxi industry.

I mean, so many industries become obsolete due to progress.

This is an industry that actually has the government willing to lend them a hand.

I mean, that's extraordinary and very unheard of if you think of the grand scheme of things.

I also just want to mention that the horse is bolting, which has been talked about a lot today, so I don't want to get too involved in that.

But most of the incidents where a horse has bolted has occurred with the driver in the carriage.

With Ramage, it happened to have occurred when the driver was not in the carriage.

But I think almost every other bolting incident that I can think of was with the driver in the carriage.

The driver could not control this.

Time expired.

You have to summarize.

Everybody has two minutes.

We have a lot of people that are waiting to testify.

Anyway, so I'm just saying that in or out of the carriage, post or no post, the bolting is a risk to the citizens of the city, the visitors to the park, and the horse's safety.

And I'm not going to get into the cruelty to the animals because, number one, I don't have time, but number two, you've heard.

You can submit testimony online, full testimony online.

I absolutely will.

Thank you.

Please do that.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye.

Nina Marie Perino is next.