PREVIEW: "Three Days Before Latest Dog Pound Mauling, I Urged LA City Officials To 'Hold An Emergency Meeting'" By Daniel Guss
Coming Soon! #BASSACRE #Kakistocracy
Three days prior to the recent dog pound mauling of Leslie Corea, a long-time employee of Los Angeles Animal Services, I urged city officials to “hold an emergency meeting” to address escalating dangers at the city’s cruel, diseased pounds.
My urgent warning was made in the presence of the City Attorney’s office and representatives of Mayor Karen Bass, whose proxies continually made untruthful, counterintuitive statements to local TV news reporters about conditions at LAAS.
Because politics and ego.
Because ignorance and arrogance.
Because kakistocracy.
But like thousands of prior red flags from hundreds of animal rescuers and LAAS volunteers, many of whom were retaliated against for speaking up, my urgent warning was ignored.
Some of these same city officials also ignored dozens of innovative, cost-effective ideas for reducing the cruelty and mitigating the dangers that appear to have contributed to the mauling.
As I have reported, they misallocated — that’s a gentle word, isn’t it? — a million dollars donated to the Animal Welfare Trust Fund, intended for the care and soothing of animals in the city’s custody, to instead inappropriately plug budget gaps and pay for a wildly overpriced, unnecessary website redesign from a vendor who nobody can recall ever appearing at a public hearing to field questions and concerns.
You can thank former Councilmember Paul Koretz for that.
Oh.
Something else.
The next day, a member of LA City Council and another Deputy City Attorney prevented me from urgently warning the entire City Council about these dangers, perhaps due to the Councilmember’s embarrassment on an unrelated matter exposed by this column.
Speaking of which, I am thrilled to share that DanielGuss.Substack.com has received five more Los Angeles Press Club nominations, including a shot at a second consecutive “Online Journalist of the Year” award, each of which directly exposes the corrupt, insecure and intransparent City Hall and its enablers.
Good luck to all of the nominees.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for 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.)