"Paul Koretz's Million-Dollar Swindle: Cruel Consequences, Retaliation and a Paperwork Shell Game" by Daniel Guss
@TheGussReport - On November 9, 2020, I wrote a column for CityWatchLA in which I had, once again, warned LA City Councilmember Paul Koretz that misappropriating more than $1 million donated by the public to the city’s Animal Welfare Trust Fund (AWTF) was a violation of its purpose, the public’s trust as well as his oath of office. I also warned that shoveling that pile of cash in a no-bid marketing and website contract to an untested vendor called “The Glue” could have severe consequences.
The purpose of the AWTF is to “enhance the quality of life for shelter and other animals” thru Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS), the city’s deadly animal pound system; a petri dish of failure and corruption that Koretz controls more than any other local politician.
Regardless, Koretz ignored all the warning signs and arrogantly squandered the dough.
Fast-forward to last week when the LA Times, long a Koretz protector, published a story about severe animal cruelty in which LAAS dogs didn’t get out of their kennels for weeks and even months, as opposed to daily, at minimum.
While City Council is responsible for the cost of ensuring the animals’ health and wellness, just a sliver of that million dollars could have brought in an army of professional dog walkers and volunteers. Imagine how much that exercise and affection would have improved the dogs’ chances of getting adopted as opposed to getting a needle to end their lives.
And imagine the positive publicity it could have generated for even more donations, volunteers and adoptions.
Typical of Koretz’s gee I didn’t know dopey dishonesty was this quote from him in the Times’ story: “I am increasingly concerned about the serious challenges that the shelters are facing.”
The man is lying through his fucking teeth.
Inhumane conditions are regularly brought to Koretz’s attention, to which his response is usually thank you, your time is up, next speaker…
Koretz’s quote in the Times is the dishonesty of a career political hack who got trounced in the spring primary by his challenger, Kenneth Mejia, an energetic CPA half of Koretz’s age who owes nothing to anyone in City Hall, in the race to become the next City Controller in their advancing November run-off.
But Koretz’s soft corruption is even worse than that.
For much of this year, current City Controller Ron Galperin, LAAS and Koretz’s office have refused to turn over a register of transactions and a running balance of money flowing into and out of the Animal Welfare Trust Fund, with each of them pointing to the others as the keeper of those and related records.
That’s what we call a circular firing squad.
Instead of providing records that were requested, these parties provided percentages rather than actual dollar figures….summaries instead of real-time balances….bullshit instead of transparency.
Last week, when Koretz’s office insisted that it had not even a single document on this million-dollar ripoff, I read him and his proxies the riot act:
“That is a pretty damning claim…the CM didn’t retain a single piece of paper for a million dollar, no-bid contract with an unknown vendor with no full-time employees, no known business address, no prior experience with City Hall and no experience in what it was hired for.
That may explain the $93,000 photography tab for a few hundred photos.
I will take this as Paul’s official response to my PRA unless greater clarity is provided by EOD. It is a very bad look.”
Within the hour, Koretz’s office sent me a zip file with 7 PDFs, yet none of the relevant requested records or the RFP or proposal for this plundering of money intended to help homeless animals whose chances of a peaceful, joyous life are already perilously low.
My response, “Wait. How did we go from •nothing• to a zip file?” in less than an hour, has still not received a response from Koretz.
There is no way that Koretz can be trusted to hold the rest of city government accountable if he hoards and hides records of his own cruel decisions. He has for years protected incompetent LAAS general managers and commissioners and defended one dumb policy idea after another.
It has finally caught up with him.
This latest episode is just the tip of the iceberg because at least one LAAS volunteer who blew the whistle on this story has been suspended for going to the media. As the City Councilmember in charge of personnel issues, that’s on Koretz, too.
When this story broke last week, I did a segment about it — and Koretz — on “The John and Ken Show” on KFI AM-640 (Jump to the 19:15 mark). Shortly after the segment ended, I received a call from Mr. Mejia, who has been masterfully educating the public on social media about how to hold our governments accountable.
We chatted as he asked logical questions and took copious notes about this and other issues like the city’s ill-advised relationship with the Best Friends organization.
What a refreshing difference! Imagine what Mejia would do with a staff of auditors and the energy and willingness to root out City Hall corruption and failure without Koretz’s baggage and cronyism.
And not just at LA Animal Services.
Follow me on The Twitters @TheGussReport.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, was nominated for three 2022 LA Press Club awards and was a runner-up in 2021 and 2020. He has contributed to Mayor Sam, CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW, 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.)