The Straight Poop from the New York Times

I never know what I'm going to be writing about next. Obituaries can always be counted on for some of the inspiration, and in the case of the passing of Edward Lehner, Who Got New Yorkers to pick Up After Dogs, Dies at 93 I was touched again by a muse.

The "pooper-scooper" law went into effect in 1978, so long ago that there is at least a full generation of city dwellers who have no idea what it might have been like to walk the streets, sidewalks, and areas of parks, with either skirting around do-do, or, if personal poop radar failed, to actually stepping it in. I was messy.

Sarah Lyall, a senior writer-at-large for the New York Times, who most recently has been on the book beat, was either thrown in the dog house to write the poop obit, or is accepting a new assignment like a pro and turning in a gem no matter what desk she's assigned to. Either way, the "pooper-scooper" gets a detailed narrative of its origins set off by the passing of the law's major sponsor, Edward Lehnar.

Mr. Lehner, center

We learn Mr. Lehnar was a lawyer, judge, and state assemblyman who grew tired of skirting city poop, or even finding he had stepped in it. There has to be a better way. There was. Legislation.   

The pooper-scooper bill was introduced in 1977 by Mr. Lehner in the state Assembly, and co-sponsored in the Senate by Frank S. Leichter. Ms. Lyall tells us "before the passage of Public Health Law 1310, as it was officially known, New York city was a minefield of dog dirt."

I remember the outcry from dog owners who were then going to henceforth have to pick up after their dogs when they crouched down to do their do-do—no matter on what surface they found themselves on. 

New Yorkers don't like to be told to do anything that they don't want to do. Ms Lyall doesn't tell us how often tickets were generated for the offence of not picking up after the pooch. My guess is there were certainly tickets, but an honor system slowly took hold over the dog owners who acceded to doing the pickups, and the sidewalks, streets and parks were eventually much, much cleaner. And they still are. 

In the mid-70s Mario Cuomo was not yet governor, he was a lawyer in Queens and eventually the state's Secretary of State. His oratorical powers wee not yet widely evident, but they were brewing. 

Ms. Lyall has unearthed an example of Mario's flourishes, when she tells us the story behind a memo he composed.

"The purpose of he bill is laudable, i.e. to require each pet owner to take care of their own, the future Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, then New York's secretary of state, wrote in a memo outlining his department's view of the bill. But not only would an officer have to catch "a dog and his owner in flagrante delicto" to enforce the law, he added, there would be the "sticky problem" of proving that "a particular piece of evidence emanated from a particular aperture."

Well said, from a man who became a three-term governor of the state, who made a stirring speech with the lights out at a Democratic presidential nominating convention, and for whom the Tappan Zee bridge was renamed.

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