John Nelson

John Nelson was an Arizona senator who introduced SB 1269 in 2011. His bill was responsible for making an already lopsided veterinary board even more slanted in favor of veterinary interests.

Rather than expand the size of the veterinary board to account for the new member, his legislation removed one of the public member seats and gave it to a certified veterinary technician. This move was counter to the recommendations of the 1997 board audit which recommended increasing, not decreasing, public representation on the board.

The legislation also reversed the balance of public members to veterinary members on the investigative committees. In particular, the legislation revised the law from specifying three public members and two veterinarians to its opposite, two public members and three veterinarians. Public members tend not to be as representative of the public as might be expected, so it's curious that Nelson felt the need to slant the investigative committees to such an extent.

The most tangible result of Nelson's legislation was to introduce some people with interesting connections to the state veterinary board. The inaugural member for his newly-created position turned out to be Julie Mumford, a veterinary technician from Prescott Animal Hospital and Equine Center. Her replacement Nikki Frost also came from the same facility and name-dropped her predecessor during her confirmation speech before the state senate. What are the odds that, for a newly-created position, both appointees would come not only from a small, rural part of the state but from the exact same veterinary hospital?

Prescott Animal Hospital, of course, has a list of prominent owners including former board member Steven Dow, AzVMA president Kenneth Skinner, and AzVMA secretary-treasurer and former board investigator Cameron Dow. Cameron Dow's wife Amie is also a veterinarian and later went on to have multiple veterinary business interests with board member Nikki Frost in the Prescott area.

Nelson no longer serves in the Arizona senate. In addition to his work as an Arizona state senator, he appears to have also served in the Arizona House of Representatives, and on the Phoenix City Council.