"Bass Ackwards" by Daniel Guss
LA Mayor returns from gay Paree to an even worse Spring Street shit-show. #Bassacre #Kakistocracy
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if just one politician said that she made well-intentioned mistakes, but is ready to change course, clear the deck, embrace better-informed advice and empower others based solely on merit?
Season that awesomeness with maximum transparency.
Optimize it with minimal interference.
This column’s cheers will be among the loudest to celebrate any politician who does that, even if she first exhausted every denial and dodge within arm’s reach using taxpayer-salaried flunkies for those deceptions.
Until then, everything is (Karen) Bass Ackwards, with swag to follow.
Finally back in LA from getting her tum-tum full of escargots and pink bubbly — I mean back from locking arms — at the Paris Olympics, the fruits of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s indifference are ripe as fuck. Pass the Pepto.
As we catch-up on some stunning developments since our last column, think of this update less as about “animal issues,” though the consequences of Bass’s failures continuously exacerbate their suffering in her deadly pounds.
Bass isn’t motivated by the suffering of others, as this column has repeatedly shown.
She is only motivated by bad publicity and multi-million-dollar lawsuits.
This update is, instead, about Bass subordinates covering their asses, abusing power not given to them and arrogantly giving the middle finger to powers clearly addressed in the City Charter. With a City Hall that is predictably paralyzed at the idea of accountability, accountability may have to come from outside of 200 N. Spring Street.
Since our last column provided the timeline of chaos at Bass’s LA Animal Services, we don’t need to rehash it beyond four bullet points:
Bass delegated oversight of Animal Services to a deputy, Jackie Hamilton
Hamilton recommended hiring Staycee Dains as its GM despite warnings and her failure to interview anyone else
As predicted by many, everything got exponentially worse under Dains
A reluctant (now former) Bass appointee had a colossal meltdown at the July 23rd commission meeting during which a controversial agenda item was temporarily shelved due to Dains withholding critical information from the agency’s commissioners.
The agenda item was rigged to let Bass kill hundreds of healthy, adoptable animals at the (anticipated and feared by many ) recommendations of a consultant who the mayor could point to without being blamed for the “Bassacre.”
Oh… the consultant who Bass > Hamilton > Dains wanted to hire — using humane donations, no less — had previously recommended that Bass hire Dains. Can you say conflict of interest???
We’ll pick-up things from there, as the next meeting was supposed to be this past Tuesday, but was canceled the night before because the entire house of cards is collapsing and Bass is out of options. Before Hamilton can cause any further harm, I’m going to tell you what is going on behind the scenes.
We know that Bass > Hamilton > Dains tried to rig this agenda item because public records unearthed by this column show that a year earlier — on July 28, 2023 — Sheila Segurson, a Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorist with the influential Maddies Fund, had offered Dains the same, and few doubt much better, services relating to conditions at LAAS for free:
To be obnoxiously blunt, why the fuck would Bass > Hamilton > Dains ignore this offer?
Because they wanted a pre-determined outcome.
Had they engaged Dr. Segurson, could it have prevented the near-deadly attack earlier this year in the Harbor pound? Could it have mitigated risks of other attacks at LAAS where people and animals suffered severe injuries, too?
Bass’s people apparently didn’t consider that, and weren’t going to allow the City Charter to get in their way. But the Charter clearly shows that it is the commissioners who manage the agency:
Sec. 22.4. Board of Commissioners.
There shall be a Board of Animal Services Commissioners who shall be appointed, removed, and organized in accordance with Charter Sections 501-503. The Department shall be under the control and management of the Board.
Bass, Hamilton and Dains aren’t commissioners. But as Bass jetted-off to Paris, and Dains went on vacation, they brought-in their consultant — Kristen Hassen — to LA anyway, on or around August 4th, despite the item being shelved on July 23rd by the three remaining commissioners on the five-person Board due to two vacancies.
We know this because these geniuses posted photos of themselves (a) fumbling around Bass’s deadly pounds without the Board discussing the issues first…
and (b) hamming it up for photos at local restaurants, with YouTuber Jackson Galaxy who, according to his Wikipedia page, is a recovering addict and cat behaviorist. It is unclear whether Bass > Hamilton > Dains had also engaged Galaxy, who appears to specialize in cats, not dogs or dog bites, without Commission review, and whether taxpayers paid for his plate at the pricey vegan restaurant.
But we do know this.
At an absolute minimum, Jackie Hamilton, a Yale Law graduate, knew — or should have known — that this violated the City Charter.
As soon as this column started submitting public records requests, Bass’s office went even further into cover-up mode. The commission meeting scheduled for this past Tuesday was suddenly canceled. Dains’ email suddenly sported an auto-reply saying that she would be out until September 16th despite taking a week-long vacation in late August.
Dains’ auto-reply now says that she will be out until October 14th.
My crystal ball says that Dains isn’t coming back at all and that terms of a divorce between her and City Hall are being quietly negotiated after just one disastrous year on the job. How much longer Hamilton will be empowered to wreak havoc is unclear, but many say that she should have been re-assigned, or let go, months ago.
Meanwhile, the air conditioning at the Harbor Pound was out, and animals in unventilated rooms were recorded in great distress in undersized crates, without water, being baked next to papered-over windows while City Councilmember Tim McOsker and soon-to-be City Council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson ignored my efforts to get answers. The old guard, Assistant GMs Annette Ramirez and Curtis Watts, are filling-in for Dains, and that’s not any better.
And there’s more, but we’ll pause here to see what they do now.
MFers.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. In June ‘24, he won its “Best Commentary, Non-Political” award. He has contributed to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)