Gov. Paul LePage’s budget proposal slashes funding to Help Fix ME, a statewide program that helps low-income and elderly Mainers get their pets spayed and neutered.

Advocates of the program say it’s been wildly successful, spaying or neutering 21,000 cats and dogs in the past 10 and a half years. They worry that losing more than $100,000, about half of the program’s funding, will send Maine’s pet population skyrocketing.

“It’s super, super important that money is available because if we don’t (have it), we’re going to go backward,” said Zachary Black, operations manager for the Greater Androscoggin Humane Society in Lewiston.

But a spokesman for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry said he believes the money could be made up elsewhere. He said the governor’s aim is to cut taxes. 

“It does not in any way eliminate the Help Fix ME program,” spokesman John Bott said.

Help Fix ME was created in 2004 to reduce the state’s pet overpopulation, control rabies and reduce the number of cats and dogs entering Maine’s animal shelters.

The program provides a cat spay-neuter voucher for $10 or a dog spay-neuter voucher for $20 to any pet owner who receives state aid, gets Social Security or earns 133 percent of the federal poverty level or less — currently $11,770 a year for one person. Animals also get rabies shots.

The dog vouchers are good only for pit bulls, pit bull mixes and other breeds that often languish in shelters.

Spaying or neutering typically costs $200 to $300, depending on the region and the veterinarian.

Help Fix ME gets its funding — usually $190,000 to $250,000 a year — through a pet store fee, specialty license plates, donations made through a check-off box on income tax returns and a $20 charge per product SKU to pet food companies that sell in Maine. 

By law, the first $100,000 of that pet food company charge goes to Help Fix ME. Any extra money goes to the state’s animal welfare program.

The governor’s budget proposal phases out the charge on pet food companies over the next two years. It also eliminates the check-box donation, which provides Help Fix ME with about $20,000 a year.

The changes would cut the program’s budget in half.

Bott said LePage doesn’t like the “triple tax” on pet food in Maine. Pet food companies are charged $80 per product by the state and also must pay $20 per product to contribute to the spay-neuter program. In addition, consumers pay sales tax on pet food. 

The governor, Bott said, wants to eliminate one of those charges — the $20 that goes to Help Fix ME.

“The thinking here is reducing the tax burden and ultimately benefiting consumers in the form of lower prices on pet food,” he said.

Bott said he did not know how much less consumers would pay for pet food if the charge on pet food companies was eliminated.

“Obviously, that would be up to businesses,” he said. “Typically, businesses pass taxes on to consumers in the form of higher prices.”

Help Fix ME advocates say they have an idea how much Mainers would save: pennies. Their calculations say Maine’s pet households paid an extra 36 cents each in 2013 because of the state’s charge on pet food companies.

“That’s pretty cheap to take care of a huge problem,” said Susan Hall, who helped start the program in 2004.

She and others say the program has helped curb the state’s overpopulation problem, particularly among cats and pit bulls. The Greater Androscoggin Humane Society credits the program with helping to reduce its cat numbers by more than half and its pit bull numbers by more than 35 percent in the past five years.

“Our spay-neuter program with the state’s spay-neuter program clearly is making a huge impact on the number of animals coming into shelters,” Black said. “Without the money there to provide this program, people aren’t going to have an option.”

Although the Lewiston shelter has offered its own spay-neuter program over the past four years in conjunction with Help Fix ME, the shelter’s grant funding has run out. Its program has ended.

“Now we really need that state program,” Black said.

While shelters worry about getting more cats and dogs — and having to find homes for them or euthanize them — other backers of Help Fix ME worry about the animals that don’t end up in shelters and cause a public health problem.

“Nothing is going to spread rabies faster than a hundred extra cats in a mobile park in Oxford County … or a bunch of extra dogs running around,” said John Nutting of Leeds. 

Nutting was a Democratic state senator and chairman of the Legislature’s Agriculture Committee when the Help Fix ME program was proposed more than a decade ago. 

“Ironically, it was the commissioner of agriculture and the Department of Agriculture, animal welfare, that suggested this (program) in order to curb unbelievable pet overpopulation,” Nutting said.

Help Fix ME proponents believe there’s no way the program can make up the money it will lose under the govenor’s proposal.

However, Bott believes it can be done.

“The department seeks donations in the form of animal welfare license plates and voluntary donations. We could redouble our efforts to increase revenues in those areas,” he said.

The Legislature’s Agriculture Committee is expected to take up the governor’s proposal Wednesday.

[email protected]