“Karen Bass Ignored My Warnings, Gets Slammed With $563,250 CalOSHA Fine” by Daniel Guss
What role did the LA Times play in dodging the truth, and will the LA Mayor keep doubling-down on ignorance and arrogance? (Also, what this column will do about it in 2025.) #Kakistocracy
As Gomer Pyle might say, “surprise, surprise, surprise…”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and her acolytes ignored every warning, red flag and desperate plea about the deadly, diseased and pointlessly cruel conditions at her Los Angeles Animal Services, LAAS, from this column, and from scores of dedicated pound volunteers, rescue groups and monied humane foundations.
And she kept her interfering right-hand gal Jackie Hamilton in-charge, ram-rodding one bad decision after another until a veteran LAAS employee, Leslie Corea, was almost killed in a highly predictable mauling in the Harbor pound earlier this year.
(Did I mention the corrupt practices like knowingly allowing, if not encouraging, the use of discreet email accounts to conduct the agency’s official business, and the LA City Attorney’s office doing nothing about it?)
Bass and Hamilton foolishly kept doubling-down on wrong and have now been slammed with a $563,250 CalOSHA fine related to the Corea mauling for “willful serious accident-related violations.”
The CalOSHA announcement can be read here.
Others share in the blame, like foot-dragging LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia and LA City Council, but especially Bass’s enablers in this matter, including then-LA City Council president Paul Krekorian and Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, who smugly chairs the committee overseeing LAAS, which includes John Lee and Heather Hutt. (Krekorian appointed Hernandez to this leadership role.)
As I wrote a year ago, Dakota Smith, the Los Angeles Times reporter for this beat, according to a former LAAS veterinarian, allegedly kept dodging the sickening and overcrowded conditions he brought to her attention, reportedly bursting into tears herself before blocking the vet on social media.
At least, until I started reporting in greater detail on the matter.
From my January 17, 2024, column:
To that last point, I demonstrated last week how, Dakota Smith, one of its City Hall reporters, allegedly called a former LA Animal Services veterinarian after my recent exposé on the District Attorney’s criminal investigation into inhumane pound conditions, asking him “are you mad at me?” The vet says that Smith asked this because a year earlier, he tipped her off to the hideous pound conditions, but that she ignored them and cut-off all contact with him… until my exposé.
In recent weeks, I have repeatedly called out the dishonest reporting at the Times, including lying by omission, as its owner Patrick Soon-Shiong wrestles with trying to salvage his and its dwindling credibility.
To wit, Smith wrote the story this morning about the CalOSHA fine despite allegedly dodging serious, highly credible sources about the conditions that led to it. #ConflictOfInterest
But if you think a massive CalOSHA fine is bad, it will pale in comparison to the gross negligence lawsuit settlement that Corea will eventually receive. I am pegging it at between $10 million and $25 million.
Why?
At last count, Corea has had at least seven surgeries directly related to the mauling, including one described as an emergency.
But the massive payout she will receive goes far beyond that.
After recent settlements for other LAAS gross negligence lawsuits, including one for $7.5 million, Bass and Hamilton — as has been exclusively documented in this column (see below) — knowingly lied to the media through their proxies about conditions at LAAS, creating a maliciously false sense of safety. They have also falsely asserted that the LAAS general manager and commissioners they hired were “especially qualified” for their respective roles, while literally doing an end-run around them to hire a controversial consultant, Kristen Hassen, to implement policies without proper vetting.
Do ya think personal injury attorneys representing Bass’s victims will salivate to present that evidence to a jury? The discovery is a mile high, which leads me to what I am doing about this type of corruption in 2025.
As I previewed at the end of my column last week, I am creating a database not only of the evidence in these and related matters at LAAS, it is going to include every warning sent to city officials that called out the dangerous conditions.
The cherry on top includes Bass’s and Krekorian’s offices literally denying that they received some of my warnings about other dangerous conditions.
That’s right.
They responded untruthfully to California Public Records Act requests in some instances, and abused their legal responsibilities in others.
And this column has the receipts.
The saying goes that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, while expecting different results. If Bass keeps Hamilton in-charge of the next general manager hiring after botching the first one; keeping ill-considered commissioners, twisting their arms and rigging their votes; and hiring unvetted consultants, look for future gross negligence settlements to go from eight-figures to nine.
Here are some of the related columns I wrote just on this subject in 2024:
"Anti-SLAPPed! Why a City Hall Operative Will Soon Cough-Up Cash"
"EXCLUSIVE: Bass Commish Using Hidden Email Accounts, Blocking Access to Public Records"
“Cornered By Its Lies, Karen Bass's City Hall Doubles-Down on Danger, Deception and Damages”
"Why A Karen Bass Appointee Lasted Just One (Absurd, Bizarre and Cringey) Meeting"
While the Los Angeles Times navel gazes about its own biases and misperceptions, this column is upping the ante in 2025, especially when it comes to LA City Hall cronyism, corruption and corrupt practices. And not just at LAAS.
We’ve got the proof, the inside sources and the sheer will to do something about it.
Shazam!
(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.)