"Why A Karen Bass Appointee Lasted Just One (Absurd, Bizarre and Cringey) Meeting" by Daniel Guss
Minutes before dubiously ascending to commission president, James Johnson told his colleagues, “I don’t give a shit,” and it showed. It went downhill from there.
While Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was locking arms at the Paris Olympics last month, she missed an LA shit-show with her name on the marquee, pardon my French.
Her stubborn, ill-considered mistakes in this story are virtually identical to those of her predecessors Eric, Antonio, James and Richard, if you remember those guys. As Henry Ford said, “if you always do, what you have always done, you’ll always get, what you’ve always got.”
Today marks 500 days since Bass appointed James Johnson and Alison McBeth-Featherstone as two of five commissioners at LA Animal Services, LAAS. From the jump, the former languished and the latter thrived.
Johnson didn’t even want the appointment.
He repeatedly said so, and often proved so in the presence of Jackie Hamilton, Bass’s manipulative deputy overseeing the troubled agency, and under whom conditions worsened exponentially.
Yet Johnson somehow became commission president on July 9th, responsible for the deeply troubled agency’s agenda despite admitting for more than a year that he lacked the knowledge, experience and passion for it.
Somehow.
He lasted just one more meeting that will be remembered for a long, long while.
July 9 — LA City Hall
It was obvious that James Johnson was poorly suited to succeed Larry Gross as commission president after he “resigned” following this column’s exposés proving that he used, and refused to disclose, hidden email accounts to conduct official city business at the insufferably cruel, blatantly dishonest agency now facing multi-million-dollar gross negligence lawsuits, pardon the unavoidable pun.
At this meeting, animal rescuers, humane advocates and pound volunteers enthusiastically and unanimously endorsed Alison McBeth-Featherstone to meritoriously succeed Gross, capably manage its agenda and lead its five members, though Gross’s seat remained vacant.
That’s the problem.
She would have done the job well and everyone knew it, especially Jackie Hamilton, whose primary City Hall accomplishments with Bass are giving reliably bad advice and covering her ass.
Since Hamilton’s lexicon doesn’t include the word transparency, watch the City Hall fuckery ahead.
When it was my turn to chime-in, I called out what Johnson had previously let slip, which was that Hamilton had been twisting arms to bizarrely wedge him in as commission president despite his reluctance to be there altogether. I encouraged him to reject the anticipated, force-fed nomination and, instead, learn and grow into the role of commissioner first, assuming he was sticking around at all.
As a break in the meeting concluded, but before matters officially resumed, Johnson was caught on a hot mic telling McBeth-Featherstone and another commissioner, Olivia Garcia, what he thought about their pending three-person nomination and vote, with commissioner Jim Jensvold absent due to illness.
With his usual bluntness, Johnson said, “but just so you and I know, I don’t give a shit either way.”
Here’s the audio:
Garcia, an often-absent attorney and apparatchik, nominated Johnson without expressing a shred of rationale.
She and Johnson voted for Johnson. McBeth-Featherstone did too, since there was no point in abstaining or voting no. The chips were going to fall as Hamilton had manipulatively orchestrated.
So let’s play devil’s advocate.
If that wasn’t Jackie Hamilton’s arm-twisting, we must otherwise believe that Garcia, a graduate of Southwestern Law School with at least 15 years in practice, who became a law firm managing partner before hanging her own shingle five years ago, figured that the commission where she is in her ninth year without ever holding that title herself, should be led by someone who had just told her that he “doesn’t give a shit” about it, instead of McBeth-Featherstone.
Noted.
Many idioms work perfectly here.
Careful what you wish for. Read the room. Read between the lines. Read the writing on the wall. Do your homework. Listen closely. Tap the brakes. Think this through. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. What were you thinking? And, at the next meeting on July 23rd, we told you so!
What Hamilton, a Yale Law grad, also did here was dent Johnson’s ego and trigger his understandable embarrassment and insecurity in “winning” something he didn’t want in a place he didn’t want to be, despite a dearth of public support for himself that had been showered upon McBeth-Featherstone a few minutes earlier.
But sometimes things boomerang unexpectedly…
A Timeline to Set The Stage
A cruel truism of corrupt political cesspools like LA City Hall is that the job of people like Jackie Hamilton is to protect the mayor by any means, including duplicity, rather than doing the right thing for the city at all times.
So before we get to what happened at the next meeting, let’s set the stage with a timeline and the hierarchy of the players, which is Karen Bass > Jackie Hamilton > Five Commissioners > Staycee Dains.
Last year, Hamilton recommended to Bass that she hire Staycee Dains as Animal Services GM despite red flags and public outcry. According to her calendar, Bass hired Dains after no more than a one-hour conversation without interviewing anyone else
Hiring Dains has been an unmitigated disaster by every parameter, despite plenty of resources, visibility and authority
The chaos led to City Hall blow-ups between Hamilton and others, including communications deputy Zach Seidl, who reportedly made it clear that Dains was incapable of righting the ship. They reportedly noted Dains’ thirst for the limelight and buffoonery rather than labor and responsibility. Her staff mocked her for referring to herself as “mama” in meetings; sending creepy motivational texts; and the look-at-me insecurity of accessorizing her badge while beaming for photos at movie screenings
Staycee Dains With Bass unwilling to change course and admit that hiring Dains was a mistake, the mayor was stuck with her portfolio of underhandedness, suffering and lawsuits. Hamilton soon muzzled Dains by restricting her interaction with the media
Since McBeth-Featherstone is not the type who could be manipulated, Hamilton wedged-in Johnson as commission president on July 9th so she could control “his” agenda that controlled Dains. Not influence it, but control it.
Maintaining our Parisian theme, with Dains muzzled, Hamilton now needed to insulate Bass from further bad publicity landing on Seidl’s desk, tout de suite.
Hamilton had a lot to remedy. Severe pound overcrowding led to violent, costly dog maulings triggered by Dains crating animals for weeks and months at a time; filthy conditions; insufficient food, water and medicine; using high-pressure water hoses triggering reactive Fear, Anxiety and Stress (FAS) biting; and rattling cages to agitate healthy, adoptable animals in order to unconscionably mislabel them as fractious and irredeemable so they could be killed without increasing kill stats.
That’s because — instead of telling the truth — Dains moronically and implausibly kept insisting to the media that while conditions worsened, she never kills animals due to a lack of space, a/k/a “No Kill.” Except no major municipal U.S. pound has ever accomplished that. Dains eventually admitted that this claim was untrue.
While Dains already has an advisory team to address these issues, Hamilton may have wanted a few degrees of separation between Bass and their thoroughly detailed plan to slaughter hundreds of healthy, adoptable critters, which I have previously coined as their “Bassacre.”
Until this column exclusively proved it, Dains denied such a plan existed and dismissed claims about it as “conspiracy theories.”
That’s another example of lying to protect Karen Bass at all cost.
July 23 — South LA
Before Johnson’s first meeting as commission president, another controversy bubbled under regarding resistance to holding this scheduled field trip meeting at the South LA pound, where the vast majority of Dains’ kills take place. City officials refuse to state why, but I am in the process of forcing the truth to the surface.
While the agenda had the appearance of normalcy, the shit was about to hit the fan during the public comment period that preceded agenda item #3, a board report from Dains in which she wanted $25,000 to hire a recently formed Austin, Texas, pound policy consultant for vaguely described “Safety and Engagement Assessment” services.
Animal rescuers and humane advocates who have been involved with LAAS for years if not decades, have expressed the opinion that City Hall wanted a plausible way to do a mass slaughter, but that the reasoning for it must come from someone several degrees of separation from Bass. And with immense irony, Dains wanted to use money for those services from the Animal Welfare Trust Fund, AWTF, whose donors are given the impression that their money will be used for life-saving comfort rather than life-ending decisions.
DISCLAIMER: To be abundantly clear, there is zero known evidence that Outcomes for Pets Consulting, LLC, its owner Kristen Hassen or anyone affiliated with them, would ever or has ever, acted in any unethical or unprofessional way. Further, there is zero known evidence that they were, or are, aware of any City Hall plan to mislead the public. Lastly, Hassen’s website has a copyright of “Outcomes Consulting, LLC,” which may or may not be the same entity.
That said, Dains failed to formally disclose important information in her report to the commissioners, now led by James Johnson:
The consultant, Kristen Hassen, endorsed Bass hiring Dains, which is a blatant conflict of interest
Why this was a no-bid contract
Whether, and which, certifications Hassen might hold
That Dains had already been offered similar services — for free — from an actual veterinarian (which Hassen is not) who is affiliated with major humane organizations
The City Attorney’s office had not been given a chance to assess at least one dog bite lawsuit, Bortugno vs. Pima (AZ) Animal Care, to determine what, if any, role Hassen may have had in that matter
That Dains already had staff to provide the same assessments, but could not explain why additional services were needed.
Draw your own conclusions…
These and other issues placed on Johnson’s first — and last — meeting agenda were about to get a thorough public critique by attendees.
And then this…
When Whitney Smith, a rescuer and humane advocate, got her turn to speak about the widely discussed agenda item, Johnson reacted explosively and without regard for public meeting laws and the First Amendment, not to mention decorum.
Roll the audio…
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office did not respond to this column’s inquiry about why its deputy responsible for the orderly running of the meeting did not halt Johnson’s unhinged reaction to Smith.
A video showing only the second half of that confrontation captured Jensvold and McBeth-Featherstone, walking out, breaking quorum and forcing a cool-down.
Olivia Garcia, who nominated Johnson for commission president, remained seated.
When the meeting later resumed, Johnson kept trying to force passage of the agenda item with Garcia’s support, bizarrely saying that he would raise the $25,000 later to reimburse the fund. Jensvold and Featherstone wanted more information from Dains, noting that she had put them in an uncomfortable position by withholding important information, as detailed above.
The City Attorney’s office also did not respond to my inquiry about why its deputy allowed Johnson to go on lengthy, un-agendized and self-indulgent commentaries at the meeting ranging from “magic dust,” his religious beliefs and Jesus Christ to “the Daniel Gusses of the world,” an apparent reaction to this column’s precision public records requests. (Attorney Paul Nicholas Boylan of Davis, California, deserves full credit for those evolving PRA capabilities.)
If that wasn’t enough excitement, Larry Gross, who Johnson replaced, was apparently watching a live stream of the brouhaha.
Between the end of the meeting and the next morning, James Johnson was no longer commission president or even a commissioner. Bass’s office would not state whether he was fired or had resigned, nor has it issued a statement about the incident or controversial agenda item. This column immediately submitted a public records request for the city’s video of the meeting, with the City Attorney’s office copied with the order to preserve it from destruction.
According to insiders, Bass’s office is now concerned about another potential lawsuit. This time, from Whitney Smith.
The agenda item was tabled for the time-being, and it is unclear whether and when Hassen might be engaged for those services. The $25,000 remains in the Animal Welfare Trust Fund.
The conditions in Karen Bass’s pounds remain wretched and deadly, unlikely to improve until the fuckery stops and its proponents (Hamilton, Dains and Garcia) are shown the door.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. Last month, 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.)