Orange decides not to start its own animal-abuse registry

The Orange County Commission decided Tuesday it is going to wait for a state law to create an animal-abuse registry instead of developing its own.

The county had been looking into ways of preventing people convicted of animal abuse from ever adopting pets again.

With an average of 55 animals a day coming into the Orange County shelter on Conroy Road, the sheer number of adoptions meant that someone's background might not be noticed and adoptions to abusers could unknowingly happen.

County staff studied the pros and cons of two bills: a state House bill, now in subcommittee, that would create a statewide database and registry for animal abusers beginning in 2018, and a local Marion County bill called "Molly's Law" that created a countywide registry in that county about 90 miles north of Or...