Hi Neighbor,

Not sure about you but I feel a heck of a lot better now that our state legislators got all high and mighty and banned those pesky plastic supermarket bags.

That took courage. After all, we are finding Staten Islanders up in arms.

Outside ShopRite on Richmond Avenue in Graniteville the other day, a 37-year-old shopper named Bobby told us this was the first he even heard of the ban. “I haven’t heard a single thing about [it],” Bobby said.

Bobby hasn’t been reading the Advance or SILive lately.

Meanwhile, seniors accuse the state of another money-grab. Gigi is 64 and lives in Mariners Harbor. She’s on a fixed income and worries about the added cost of reusable bags and/or paper bags.

“As it is, the city takes all of my money,” Gigi said.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no fan of plastic bags. Although they do make getting groceries from the car into the house easier. That is, when they don’t split open, sending two-liter Diet Pepsis rolling down the block. I probably don’t hold the record, but have been known to thread 16 of those grocery-filled bags on each arm, from my wrist past my elbow. I wobble a bit on the way up the front steps. But it’s worth it.

Today’s missive, though, is really not about supermarket plastic bags and our emboldened state legislators’ enlightened defense our environment.

It’s about dogs. Mean dogs. Dogs whose bite is bigger than their bark.

And about the pathetic state law that allows owners of these mean mutts to get away with it.

I don’t know what changed in the canine world over the many decades Bob Scamardella and I have lived here. Bob -- he of the Scamardella funeral-home-florist-lawyer-dentist Scamardellas – tells a story of Pee Wee, his childhood pooch.

Back in the day, as they say today, the Sunnyside Scamardellas had a dog named Pee Wee. Life in the neighborhood was idyllic. The Roadhouse was the Buddy-Buddy Club. Clove Road was narrower. Franzreb Stables and the Columbian Lyceum weren’t rows of homes jammed together. The Staten Island Expressway hadn’t obliterated Clove Valley. There was no Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Cars were clunkier. Slower. There weren’t many of them.

And dogs roamed the land. As a kid, I honestly don’t recall ever seeing anyone walk a dog on a leash.

“I’d be going out,” Bob told me over cocktails one night in his favorite Sunnyside Italian haunt now known as the Roadhouse. “Say to the playground to play stickball. Mom would say, ‘Take the dog.’ He’d follow me. No leash.

“While I played stickball, he would disappear. Not too far, though, because when I was done playing I’d just yell out his name and he’d come running. Then he would follow me home.”

Same with the Ocean Breeze Lalines. Lucky Laline – that was the dog – would spin in circles when it was her time to go. If she could have opened the door herself, she would. But we did, and off she went. Mind you, we lived half a block from Capodanno Boulevard. Gives you an idea how much traffic there was back in the ‘60s.

Lucky spent a lot of time across Capodanno, on the beach. There were a lot of muddy creeks and swamps in Ocean Breeze, too. More often than not, Lucky trotted home covered in stinking black mud. The only guy not happy about all of this was Mario, our neighbor across the street. Lucky tended to leave her calling card on his 200-by-100 spread of land every day, not far from his Blessed Mother shrine. Or, as the neighborhood heathens called it, The Bathtub Madonna.

I admit. It was crude.

See a dog roaming the streets today and if you’re smart, cross the street. Go the other way. Seek shelter. Because stray dogs got a whole lot meaner.

There have been a spate of dog attacks over the past couple of years. On Little Clove Road in Sunnyside, a pit bull broke loose and attacked a young woman and her two Chihuahua pups. A couple of weeks later, an identical dog was caught on video attacking a man and his pet at Renwick Avenue and Oswego Street. Meanwhile, two large dogs broke free from their home in Great Kills and attacked a woman and her two small dogs in her own backyard. Those same dogs are believed to have attacked a 75-year-old woman and her poodle around the corner on Oceanview Place. A 16-year-old Pomeranian was mangled “like a chew toy” and killed in Eltingville.

After those attacks, victims notified the NYPD. Cops referred the cases to the Health Department.

Advance/SILive reporter Joe Ostapiuk took this story on back in April.

As with anything involving the law, things get complicated. But if you’ve seen Staten Island attorney Jonathan D’Agostino’s ads about dog bites, you know his philosophy: Bite back.

Jonathan does, via lawsuits. But he also wants New York State to bite back with stricter laws that stiffen consequences.

“Antiquated.” That’s how our New York dog bite laws were described to Joe.

“In New York, there is no actual statute governing what happens if the owner of a dog allows it to attack somebody and someone gets horrifically injured,” Glen Devora, D’Agostino managing attorney, told Joe. The dog must be shown to have a dangerous tendency to be violent. And then the victim has to prove the dog’s owner knew the dog was vicious.

But the real kicker is this: The “one-bite” rule. It shields negligent dog owners from civil responsibility resulting from the first injury inflicted by their dogs.

The second kicker is how our state legislators responded – or didn’t -- when the Advance/SILive reached out to get their take on the antiquated law. Joe sent an email to press representatives of every Staten Island state legislator last spring. Three times – April, May and June.

Two responded. One said she would, but never did. That’s out of six.

Sen. Andy Lanza’s person told us that “Sen. Lanza subscribes to adopting the New Jersey and Pennsylvania model.” Laws are much tougher over there. OK. What’s next, senator?

Sen. Diane Savino’s rep was a bit more talkative.

"My office gets hundreds of calls a week from constituents around the district, and this issue is one that I have not seen come up in the past,” the rep said. “As this has come up in recent weeks, I believe it would be beneficial to examine the issue further to ensure that the law in New York is appropriate for dealing with these events."

Beneficial? Perhaps. That was eight month ago.

Nicole Malliotakis’ person promised Joe to put the issue in front of the assemblywoman twice. We never heard back.

Meanwhile, we didn’t hear a thing from Assemblymen Charles Fall, Mike Cusick or Mike Reilly.

I get it. There’s a lot going on that our state legislators must address. A raging drug crisis on Staten Island. Bail reform that could send New York back to 1970’s “Fear City.” A $6.1 BILLION budget deficit. Health care. Specialized high school admission.

And I’m sure we’ll be hearing a ton about legalizing those funny little cigarettes. You know. Pot. Weed. Grass. Mary Jane.

Vicious dogs? Horrific attacks? A mangled Pomeranian. Nope. Hasn’t made the list.

But plastic bags? Yep. That we care about.

Memo to Staten Island’s legislators: Perhaps our neighbors aren’t calling your offices clamoring for help after they or their pet is attacked by a savage dog. I wouldn’t think of it either. I’d call the cops.

And there’s the problem, neighbors. There’s nothing much the cops can do.

Maybe we can squeeze a look at this situation during the 2020 legislative season. That is, between trying to get more pot into the hands of New Yorkers and how taxes from those giggle weeds will fill the $6.1 BILLION budget hole.

And by the way, to all you dog-walkers out there who have been using those left-over-but-soon-to-be-banned supermarket bags to pick up after Pee-Wee when Pee-Wee does something other than pee-wee:

Don’t get any ideas! Pet stores sell designer poop bags. Some are even scented.

Brian