On second thought, why not try both the carrot and stick to increase pet licensing in Minneapolis?

That's what City Council Member Lisa Goodman was thinking Friday, when she put the brakes on her own proposal to double the penalty for an unlicensed pet to $200. The downtown-area council member wants to give the city's regulatory staff time to look at whether cutting dog and cat license fees might be an incentive for people to sign up their pets, without putting animal control operations further in the red.

"We would get closer to my ideal, which is to not have the people who behave pay for those who don't," she said.

It's unusual for a council member to snatch delay from the jaws of victory. But Goodman told her colleagues: "If it looks like enough people think I'm not crazy, maybe we should ask staff to look at that." The council obliged her.

Goodman said the idea grew out of feedback she got after a council committee unanimously approved her original proposal. The thinking then was that the threat of a big penalty would encourage more people to license pets.

But now she wants to couple that with cutting the typical $30 annual license fee to something like $20. The city estimates that fewer than 6 percent of dogs and cats are licensed.

One factor in the decision will be how much money the city's animal control division might lose in license fees, and how much of that would be offset by the higher unlicensed pet charge. Animal control operations in Minneapolis are one of the few regulatory operations that don't pay for themselves.

Several suburbs have moved away from licensing dogs. But Minneapolis operates a pound and has a 19-member animal control staff to enforce regulation of pets ranging from ferrets to St. Bernards. It uses income from licenses fees, charges for impounding dogs, and levies extra charges against owners of dangerous or potentially dangerous dogs to help cover its costs.

The council did approve Goodman's proposal to shift the pet licensing year from a period starting on Jan. 30 to 12 months from whenever the license was purchased.

Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438