"Why Karen Bass Should Cut Even More Millions From Her Worst Department" by Daniel Guss
Her hideous LA Animal Services even has, dare I say, the potential to become a model for other cities. But, oh, the politics and egos...
I attended LA Mayor Karen Bass’s “State of the City” address this week. If her goal was to project optimism about a city struggling in every conceivable way, then mission accomplished!
But it was long on platitude, short on plan and without a single apology from her.
Better: Karen Bass’s (Awful) State of the City, featuring THC as a numbing agent.
I (almost) felt bad for Bass, standing in front of colleagues, reporters and several hundred invited guests pretending that LA hasn’t collapsed on her watch. With her 72nd birthday coming at the end of the summer, her life will be defined by only one year, 2025, regardless of how things go from here, unless they get worse, which they can. And Governor Gavin, coming to terms with his own political mortality, ain’t bailin’ her out.
I will have more to say about this in upcoming columns and radio segments on KFI-AM 640, 790-KABC and 870-KRLA.
During the presentation, Bass’s team released her proposed budget.
Among other things, it calls for her worst department (by far), Los Angeles Animal Services, LAAS, to suffer a much-rumored $5 million reduction in its budget from $30 million to $25 million.
Last year, 92% of that $30 million went for salaries, especially bloated middle- and upper-management, and a dishonest communications team.
The remaining 8% was sprinkled about in a struggle for insufficient veterinary care, food, medicine and cleaning supplies, et al, resulting in the city having to settle multi-million-dollar personal injury lawsuits with more to come. A mountain of donated funds was continually misused for everything from pizza parties to travel.
How’s that status quo working out?
With 374 employees paid those tens of millions of dollars, how come its pounds are packed to the ceiling, diseased, deadly and miserable?
How come there is virtually no animal cruelty enforcement; no thriving spay/neuter clinics and a $7.5 million payout last June for a single major fuck-up that cost someone one of her limbs and other severely damaged body parts despite thousands of urgent warnings from volunteers, rescue groups and pound staffers that, if heeded, might have prevented these massive lawsuits?
Now Bass wants to reportedly close three of her deadly pounds, according to a leak from interim General Manager Annette Ramirez, an Animal Control Officer by training, in a $231,000 gig for which she is neither motivated nor qualified.
With public input at City Council meetings scheduled for only two days (starting today and ending on Monday), Ramirez didn’t even bother to send out an email asking people to speak up and minimize Bass’s proposed cuts.
No response.
Not from Ramirez.
Not from the Mayor’s office.
Having reported extensively on LAAS last year, and for many years prior, Bass should do the taxpayers and animals in its custody a favor, and cut several million dollars more from its budget.
That thud you just heard is half of City Hall having heart attacks upon reading that suggestion from me.
But it’s true.
As I preview below, eliminating millions more from the LAAS budget — wisely, with precision and in consultation with rescue groups, volunteers and volunteers who were fired for speaking-up — would not only cut the bloat, it would help ensure that only those who remain employed are there because they are dedicated to rescuing, healing and saving animals’ lives.
Bass, City Council and CAO Matt Szabo can save even more money by incentivizing the salary of those whose jobs aren’t eliminated.
Re-imagining a streamlined LAAS would not only force it to be more efficient, it would help reduce liability, keep all of the pounds open, kept much cleaner and playful and for longer hours.
A first mandatory step is removing the #1 negative presence at LAAS, the widely disliked Jackie Hamilton, Bass’s arm-twisting deputy who has answers for everything, except that most of them have been ill-considered, wrong and costly.
Hamilton’s hit parade of stupidity includes:
Bass interviewing only one candidate for LAAS GM, Staycee Dains, who lasted one god-awful year
Blocking Commissioners from vetting quals of a controversial consultant, Kristen Hassen, whose services are reportedly tied to various lawsuits in other jurisdictions
Ram-rodding someone into the Commission presidency who said “I don’t give a shit” about being in the role (which would allow him, i.e. Hamilton, to control its agenda), before he had an infamous meltdown at the very next meeting before being shown the door.
Just a few weeks ago, Hamilton’s underhandedness resulted in a highly inappropriate ex-parte meeting between disgruntled relatives of former City Councilmember — and convicted felon — Mitch Englander and the Commissioners, which Deputy City Attorney Steve Houchin should have, but did not, prevent.
LAAS will remain a massive liability until and unless Hamilton is moved elsewhere.
My other recommendations are as follows:
Move LAAS, which is a law enforcement agency, under the purview of the Los Angeles Police Department which, while saturated in problems of its own, is a more orderly, better financed and structured entity. This alone could eliminate the need for the General Manager and Assistant GM.
There. I just saved Karen Bass and the taxpayers $600,000 in salary and benefits.
Ditch the entire communications team, which repeatedly misled LA news media about conditions that led to those lawsuits, and immeasurable suffering and death within the city’s pounds, because Bass reportedly muzzled the struggling GM Staycee Dains.
Another $400,000 saved.
Get the idea?
Keep only the personnel who are dedicated to life-saving, transparency, spay/neuter and success.
LAAS pounds are in immense disrepair and are closed too often.
Management finds every reason to not take in animals
It has no thriving spay/neuter clinics
Sick and injured animals are kept out of the view of the public, with volunteers barred from seeing, caring for or comforting them. Those who speak-up are regularly suspended or fired.
In fact, Ramirez, the interim GM, recently acknowledged that LAAS literally dumps healthy, adoptable cats onto the streets of Los Angeles without proof of sterilization, and with no source for food, water or shelter.
If you did this, you would be charged with criminal animal abandonment:
California Penal Code Section 597s addresses the offense of animal abandonment. Specifically, it prohibits the willful abandonment of any animal and classifies it as a misdemeanor. This means that upon conviction, the offender can face penalties like fines and/or jail time.
The office of District Attorney Nathan Hochman is aware of this, but has done nothing about it.
Worse, LAAS moves animals in its custody to other areas of the city, meaning that if you’re looking for your lost pet in your local pound, you may never find them because if the city didn’t kill them, it may have abandoned them on the street miles from your home. It squandered tens of thousands of dollars in donated funds for photography and related services, yet countless animals listed on its website don’t have photos in case their family, or adopters, are looking for them.
Millions of dollars are squandered on salaries and benefits for a Director of Field Operations and their underlings, yet they do virtually nothing to enforce cruelty complaints, spay/neuter laws and stopping backyard breeders.
It can be so disheartening, someone texted me this about one well-liked Animal Control Officer, or ACO:
Conditions within the pounds are so awful — despite repeated denials by LAAS’s media relations people — that Chief Veterinarian Dr. Jeremy Prupas has repeatedly threatened to quit and get a gig at the Annenberg Foundation. Yet there are rumors that he has turned down free veterinary care from several of the largest vet hospitals in the area. And if City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office investigates Prupas’ emails to city officials, they might discover that he allegedly warned someone is going to get bit. Bad.
Because law firms suing the the city might already have proof of warnings like that.
And shockingly, Ramirez confirmed this week that even more animals were killed last weekend because a supervisor was out and there was no available replacement, so she just amped-up the killing; a tragic preventable admission.
Okay, But Then What?
If City Hall wants the specifics, they should reach out to the front-line employees, volunteers and rescue organizations for ideas on how to streamline these functions, improve outcomes, save lives and money, far beyond what was proposed by Bass.
If LAAS were streamlined and placed under the LAPD’s umbrella, the additional budget cuts I propose could be put into a full veterinary staff, medicine, food and cleanliness, i.e. disease prevention that the agency allows to fester to justify killing healthy, adoptable and friendly animals because they have “the sniffles.”
A portion of those extra savings should be set aside for volunteers and rescues to spend on supplies and foster care to get more animals out of the pound, which would save the city even more money.
Most of it could be reinvested in new ways to deal with bigger humane issues.
One voice Bass should listen to, that Hamilton has dodged, is Paul Darrigo, a widely respected humane advocate whose group, Citizens for a Humane Los Angeles, CHULA, has long called for a Reserve Animal Control Officer program, RACO, because there is virtually zero animal cruelty, spay/neuter or backyard breeder enforcement in the city.
Imagine having a team of deputized volunteers who would do, for free, the work that current salaried LAAS employees do not.
Of course, the unions would hate that, but that’s how we got into this situation in the first place.
A tectonic shift like this could be done with direct involvement of the Controller’s office so that rules, roles and goals could be established and developed in tandem with the LAPD and the dedicated people who want, and know, that things can only get better from this hideous low.
It’s simple.
Cut the bloat.
Embrace those who have dedicated themselves to the cause and transparency.
Incentivize everything.
If you think it’s crazy, let me ask you this once again, as someone who has watched this failure and insanity since 1999…
How has the status quo worked out?
And just one last question…
Got any better ideas?
(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 the Daily Mail, 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.)