New York Newsday, June 17, 1997
Critics Get Fired Fast
City Hall axes 2 from animal center
by Paul Moses
Staff Writer
Hours after two offficials testified that excessive control from City Hall was ruining a city-funded animal-control service, the Giuliani administration fired them.
The swift response came yesterday in the wake of a City Council report that said far more abandoned pets turned over the city-controlled shelters were being killed than adopted.
The two offficials fired by the mayor's office were board members at the Center for Animal Care and Control, or CACC, a non-profit group that took over the city's animal-services contract aftter the ASPCA bowed out in 1994. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appoints the board.
Dr. Louise Murray, joined by Rosemary Joyce, had told the City Council the group was "trapped in a cycle of failure which can only be broken if we are released from the stranglehold of City Hall." Murray said she was told that Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro had blocked the appointment of a new executive director who was recognized nationally for his work with abandoned pets.
In a letter released in City Hall, Mastro said the appointment didn't go through because the leading applicant took another job.
The applicant, Edwin Sayres, said in a telephone interview from Denver yesterday that he had been interviewed April 18 and was offered the position several weeks ago. But, he said, he accepted a job with Pet Smart Charities, an animal-aid charity.
Mastro told Murray and Joyce in his letter that they were fired immediately for "personal resistance" to the city's choice of an interim manager.
Even with the Giuliani administration's reputation for allowing no dissent, the swiftness of its reprisal was marked. Councilwoman Kathryn Freed (D-Manhattan), who led yesterday's hearing, called the firings "outrageous" and said they proved critics' point. The Giuliani administration was "living down to our expectations," she said.
Despite the administration's quick move, Murray and Joyce were essentially powerless. No measure can pass the board unless three city officials-the health and sanitation commissioners and a deputy police commissioner-serving on it approve, according to its by-laws.
The agency was created with the goal of improving on the ASPCA's performance in caring for stray animals. But the Council report released yesterday said 71 percent of animals taken to CACC in 1996 were put to death, the same rate as in 1993 under the ASPCA. The proportion of"adoptions" improved slightly over the same period, from 14 percent to 18 percent. The national average is 24 percent, the report said.
Nor has the city Health Department released its own reports on the shelters, Freed said.
The council report also said the CACC was underfunded and poorly managed. On-site visits found that cages were unsanitary and that shelters needed repair, it said.
CACC Chairman John Doherty, who is also the city sanitation commissioner, maintained that since the group took over animal care services from the ASPCA on Jan. 1, 1995, it made steady improvements even as the intake of animals increased 12.5 percent to 63,123 in 1996.
Since more animals entered the system, the number leaving alive also increased. Doherty said 1996 adoptions by individuals were up 46 percent over the previous year.