Videotaped statement of
former CACC Public Relations Director
FAITH ELLIOTT
1. I am a Hunter College dean's list graduate student who majored in history and political science, with an employment background in radio and television broadcasting, government affairs and public relations. I have had a life-long interest in animal welfare.
2. I began as Director of Public Information at CACC on May 20, 1996 after being interviewed by CACC's general counsel Douglas Mansfield, human resources director Virginia Maher, board member Anne Earle and executive director Marty Kurtz. I was told I got the job out of one hundred applicants. My job responsibilities were to be the official spokesperson for the shelter system, write the newsletter, do publicity, answer any questions from the press or public and generate items and events to bring the shelter into the public view.
3. Early on, Marty Kurtz instructed me that, as a matter of policy, whenever I send out a press release or make a public appearance, that I must inform Fred Winters, who was head of external affairs at the Department of Health. The City was continually putting pressure on the CACC to take the heat, in other words, "you -- CACC -- take all the criticism, despite the fact that we're not giving you more money, and keep us out of it." Fred Winters told us directly that he didn't want his hands dirty, that the Mayor didn't want any part of CACC and that all the dirt should stick to us and keep City Hall and the Health Department separate from criticism. Kurtz told me that the worst partner you could have is the City. He previously worked at the Department of Health for about twenty years, and in fact, was on leave from his job there during his time at CACC.
4. Marty Kurtz resigned from CACC in February of 1997. After he left, Doug Mansfield, CACC's general counsel, was in charge for several months. Even though there was a supposed executive search committee, in my opinion, there was never really any plan to look for another executive director from the humane community. There were about twenty-five resumes submitted by people in the animal field from around the country. I learned that John Doherty told Dina Margolis, CACC's human resources director, "don't give the resumes to the board members, give them to me. I have to see everything first."
5. Every Wednesday morning, Doug Mansfield would go and have a secret meeting with John Doherty and we would have to ask Doug about problems or things we wanted to do which he would then take back to Doherty. Basically, the CACC was being run through the Department of Sanitation, which I guess was taking their cues from City Hall and Randy Mastro, the Deputy Mayor for Operations.
6. At one point during this interim period one of the kennel workers was challenging Dr. Kopp and threatened to complain to Doug Mansfield about her conduct. Dr. Kopp replied, "well go ahead, Doug's not my boss, John Doherty is my boss."
7. After no executive director was forthcoming, I was interviewed for the job by the board. They asked me what is your policy on euthanasia? I told them I believed it was a last resort. Then they asked me what about Dr. Kopp, CACC's chief veterinarian who had openly expressed her philosophy on euthanasia as a necessity equivalent to herd management. I told them that is an area where we do disagree. I said to the board the irony to me is many times I will come back a second day and an adoptable spaniel will be dead, yet a dog that has been lying there for two days in feces and vomit will still be languishing. Silence. The independent board members had compassion as I did, but the City board members would simply not respond.
8. In June 1997, four months after Marty Kurtz had resigned, the Giuliani Administration appointed Marilyn Blohm as executive director on an "interim basis," but she was still employed in the Mayor's Office of Operations and generally spent less than thirty percent of her time at CACC.
9. In one of her first meetings with us, Marilyn said that she wanted to "string up and slaughter her" neighbor's dog because it had scared her horse. Another time she said she was ready to strangle her cat for dumping her makeup into the toilet. I felt these kind of remarks were completely inappropriate for the new head of an animal shelter system. Marilyn often referred to animal activists as wackos or another derogatory term, and anyone who criticized CACC was a malcontent. As for her management style, it quickly became evident that Mrs. Blohm hired the people who would be quiet and fired the people who would not be quiet.
10. Under Marty Kurtz, we always had an open door policy. Marilyn started to close the door on the press. CACC was asked for media access for something as uncontroversial as a dog biting somebody. A newspaper wanted to take a picture. Marilyn made me say no to them, to not let them come in for anything, good, bad or indifferent. Marty Kurtz never asked me to lie about anything that went on. Marilyn Blohm was not like that.
11. I got a call from The New York Times saying we hear a peregrine falcon died in your custody. I had not heard of this until that call. I asked Dr. Kopp if she knew about it and she said it had been in the Manhattan shelter for a day. When I went to Marilyn with it, it turned out that the bird had been at CACC for two days. No one had called DEC, as required by Federal law because the bird was a banded Federally-protected species. It just happened that DEC inspectors came in the second day to see some finches and spotted the falcon, which they immediately rushed to Animal Medical Center, but it was too late and the bird died within a short time of getting there.
12. I went to Marilyn and said that the situation was disgusting, that a falcon was needlessly suffering, that somebody's lying here, this is a protected species and that CACC can really be in big trouble here. Why didn't the people at the shelter handle it properly? Her response was to say, "okay, let's come up with a plausible denial. And we'll say that Ben, the shelter director saw it, and we'll say that we were treating it, not that that's what we believe." Quote unquote. I was horrified and I responded that I would not speak on that. And Doug Mansfield said, "oh well we should really speak with one voice." Marilyn created a chain of events and contacted staff members to make sure everyone was answering together, and because I had expressed doubts about things, I was kept out of the loop. The DEC interviewed Marilyn Blohm, Doug Mansfield, Sue Kopp, Jody Jones and some others, and as far as I know, no sanctions were imposed. But according to what Marilyn and Doug were proposing to me, they must have lied to DEC about the actual events with that falcon.
13. Often, in my capacity as Director of Public Information, I had to deal with a lot of delicate and unpleasant situations that arise at the shelters. There were a variety of mistakes by shelter personnel, from vile and horrible ones to once in a while a legitimate mistake.
14. I wrote, hosted and produced a cable TV show for CACC entitled For Pet's Sake. I personally brought to Marilyn Blohm the paperwork for a dog named Charlie that I had personally reserved for the TV show. The card was marked with big yellow highlighted Do Not Put to Sleep with three phone numbers for me. Nonetheless, Manhattan shelter director Ben Gill told me Dr. Kopp instructed him to kill this animal. I told this to Marilyn. I said this is disgusting. I had found a home for this dog with an author who takes her dogs to her book signings. What is wrong here? I never got an apology. I never got an explanation. It was just swallowed into the crevasse. This happened again and again when I reserved dogs for the cable TV show and other shows I did. Dr. Kopp saw it as a threat to her authority that I was reserving animals. When I calmly confronted her at the Park Place office about one animal she killed that I had reserved she practically attacked me, screaming at me in front of the whole office staff. Marilyn knew about the incident, but to my knowledge, she never disciplined Dr. Kopp for it. Most of the animals I reserved were guaranteed homes, yet Dr. Kopp continued to kill them.
15. When I first arrived at CACC there were volunteers who were walking dogs, distributing posters, helping out, one volunteer got a dog run door donated at the Manhattanshelter. There was a real volunteer program. Around October 1996, there was a falling out between the administration and a group of these volunteers who went to the press and were critical of the conditions and policies at CACC that they had observed while inside. Immediately thereafter there was basically no volunteer program. They never started it up again, even after Marilyn Blohm arrived. Dr. Kopp hated the volunteers because they weren't part of her philosophy that mass killing had to be done, like culling the herd.
16. When I was at CACC shelter staff killed twenty-three animals that had been sterilized in anticipation of placing them for adoption.
17. The euthanasia rate was much higher than it should have been because the other steps that could have easily been taken were not taken. For example, the off-site adoptions program that I set up with ten pet shops around the city that agreed to take our animals on a daily or weekend basis was stonewalled and stalled by Doug Mansfield. SandraBatalla, our volunteer coordinator, had done a fantastic job of lining up volunteers that were ready to go. I pleaded with Doug repeatedly to approve this program to get it started. I even volunteered to go myself and help getting it started. Finally he said, well, let's try it with one place. The direct consequence of not instituting this program on a full scale was the deaths of thousands of shelter animals who could have otherwise been adopted out.
18. Almost all of the proposals I made to increase adoptions were ignored or rejected. I had written up an entire press and media plan for a two-year period. I has actually enlisted the Amazing Kreskin to be our celebrity spokesman for free. I had the designer Todd Oldam. I had the writer C.Z. Guest who was all ready to go with public service announcements for us as well as fundraising. I had designed a subway campaign. I proposed that the City give us a vacant space so we could create a CACC thrift shop and push all of our adoption materials, possibly have animals there and also sell donated items to benefit CACC. I had a proposal to go into the schools. These were all things I wrote up and presented. I spent my lunch hour putting up posters in the neighborhood, and other people started doing that. There was so much to do that didn't cost anything or was minimal, and whose benefits would have been tremendous. Marilyn and Doug never got behind any of these ideas. Later Doug wrote Kreskin a very dismissive letter and he was very hurt.
19. I wrote memos to Marty Kurtz, Doug Mansfield and Marilyn Blohm about the problematic conditions in the shelters. While Marty Kurtz was responsive and would often speak to me about them, Doug and Marilyn would not respond to my memos or my request for conversations.
20. Denise Brown, Joyce Clemmons, Jackie Casano, Jody Jones, Susan Kopp all have dozens of complaints against each of them from CACC staffers, volunteers and members of the public, both written and oral. There was no mechanism to document telephone complaints. Complaints came in every single day. Marilyn and Doug were aware of many of these and never fired the managers who toed the party line and shut up. They're all still there, while anyone who challenges management on euthanasia and other humane issues were fired. Both Sondra Batalla and I were not sneaking around, we would directly confront the source. I would tell Marilyn and Doug if I saw something amiss, I thought it was my duty to see that it didn't happen again. If you were honest you were not desired by management, but if you kept quiet you stayed on.
21. The police were constantly dropping off animals hogtied in the patrol car trunks, summer and winter. Many times muzzles were roped or taped unnecessarily limiting the animal's air supply. I had written up a proposal to do an education seminar for the cops. Then Dr. Kopp called Yolanda Jiminez, the Deputy Police Commissioner for Community Affairs and a CACC board member. But Dr. Kopp said she didn't want to "step on police toes." So the effort to improve police drop offs was just lost in the ether.
22. Police Emergency Services Unit often over-tranquilized animals, both dogs and cats and wildlife. They would arrive dead or die soon after arriving and CACC would have to take the heat, not ESU. Dr. Kopp said the police were very sensitive and "to go lightly on this one."
23. Early in 1998, I was informed by Marilyn Blohm that I wasn't being fired, because I was doing a wonderful job, but that she was going to change my position into public relations and fundraising. I know that under HR law, a way to get rid of an employee that you have no reason to fire is to change their job description. Now the job I was doing was going to be called Director of External Affairs, and Marilyn asked if I would be interested in applying for it. She advertised the job in the papers and for the next four months I was basically frozen out of the loop. Mrs. Blohm informed me that June 22nd was my last day because she hired another person. She handed me a confidentiality agreement that I had to sign if I wanted to receive a month's severance pay. As a matter of principle, I did not sign it.
former CACC Public Relations Director
FAITH ELLIOTT
1. I am a Hunter College dean's list graduate student who majored in history and political science, with an employment background in radio and television broadcasting, government affairs and public relations. I have had a life-long interest in animal welfare.
2. I began as Director of Public Information at CACC on May 20, 1996 after being interviewed by CACC's general counsel Douglas Mansfield, human resources director Virginia Maher, board member Anne Earle and executive director Marty Kurtz. I was told I got the job out of one hundred applicants. My job responsibilities were to be the official spokesperson for the shelter system, write the newsletter, do publicity, answer any questions from the press or public and generate items and events to bring the shelter into the public view.
3. Early on, Marty Kurtz instructed me that, as a matter of policy, whenever I send out a press release or make a public appearance, that I must inform Fred Winters, who was head of external affairs at the Department of Health. The City was continually putting pressure on the CACC to take the heat, in other words, "you -- CACC -- take all the criticism, despite the fact that we're not giving you more money, and keep us out of it." Fred Winters told us directly that he didn't want his hands dirty, that the Mayor didn't want any part of CACC and that all the dirt should stick to us and keep City Hall and the Health Department separate from criticism. Kurtz told me that the worst partner you could have is the City. He previously worked at the Department of Health for about twenty years, and in fact, was on leave from his job there during his time at CACC.
4. Marty Kurtz resigned from CACC in February of 1997. After he left, Doug Mansfield, CACC's general counsel, was in charge for several months. Even though there was a supposed executive search committee, in my opinion, there was never really any plan to look for another executive director from the humane community. There were about twenty-five resumes submitted by people in the animal field from around the country. I learned that John Doherty told Dina Margolis, CACC's human resources director, "don't give the resumes to the board members, give them to me. I have to see everything first."
5. Every Wednesday morning, Doug Mansfield would go and have a secret meeting with John Doherty and we would have to ask Doug about problems or things we wanted to do which he would then take back to Doherty. Basically, the CACC was being run through the Department of Sanitation, which I guess was taking their cues from City Hall and Randy Mastro, the Deputy Mayor for Operations.
6. At one point during this interim period one of the kennel workers was challenging Dr. Kopp and threatened to complain to Doug Mansfield about her conduct. Dr. Kopp replied, "well go ahead, Doug's not my boss, John Doherty is my boss."
7. After no executive director was forthcoming, I was interviewed for the job by the board. They asked me what is your policy on euthanasia? I told them I believed it was a last resort. Then they asked me what about Dr. Kopp, CACC's chief veterinarian who had openly expressed her philosophy on euthanasia as a necessity equivalent to herd management. I told them that is an area where we do disagree. I said to the board the irony to me is many times I will come back a second day and an adoptable spaniel will be dead, yet a dog that has been lying there for two days in feces and vomit will still be languishing. Silence. The independent board members had compassion as I did, but the City board members would simply not respond.
8. In June 1997, four months after Marty Kurtz had resigned, the Giuliani Administration appointed Marilyn Blohm as executive director on an "interim basis," but she was still employed in the Mayor's Office of Operations and generally spent less than thirty percent of her time at CACC.
9. In one of her first meetings with us, Marilyn said that she wanted to "string up and slaughter her" neighbor's dog because it had scared her horse. Another time she said she was ready to strangle her cat for dumping her makeup into the toilet. I felt these kind of remarks were completely inappropriate for the new head of an animal shelter system. Marilyn often referred to animal activists as wackos or another derogatory term, and anyone who criticized CACC was a malcontent. As for her management style, it quickly became evident that Mrs. Blohm hired the people who would be quiet and fired the people who would not be quiet.
10. Under Marty Kurtz, we always had an open door policy. Marilyn started to close the door on the press. CACC was asked for media access for something as uncontroversial as a dog biting somebody. A newspaper wanted to take a picture. Marilyn made me say no to them, to not let them come in for anything, good, bad or indifferent. Marty Kurtz never asked me to lie about anything that went on. Marilyn Blohm was not like that.
11. I got a call from The New York Times saying we hear a peregrine falcon died in your custody. I had not heard of this until that call. I asked Dr. Kopp if she knew about it and she said it had been in the Manhattan shelter for a day. When I went to Marilyn with it, it turned out that the bird had been at CACC for two days. No one had called DEC, as required by Federal law because the bird was a banded Federally-protected species. It just happened that DEC inspectors came in the second day to see some finches and spotted the falcon, which they immediately rushed to Animal Medical Center, but it was too late and the bird died within a short time of getting there.
12. I went to Marilyn and said that the situation was disgusting, that a falcon was needlessly suffering, that somebody's lying here, this is a protected species and that CACC can really be in big trouble here. Why didn't the people at the shelter handle it properly? Her response was to say, "okay, let's come up with a plausible denial. And we'll say that Ben, the shelter director saw it, and we'll say that we were treating it, not that that's what we believe." Quote unquote. I was horrified and I responded that I would not speak on that. And Doug Mansfield said, "oh well we should really speak with one voice." Marilyn created a chain of events and contacted staff members to make sure everyone was answering together, and because I had expressed doubts about things, I was kept out of the loop. The DEC interviewed Marilyn Blohm, Doug Mansfield, Sue Kopp, Jody Jones and some others, and as far as I know, no sanctions were imposed. But according to what Marilyn and Doug were proposing to me, they must have lied to DEC about the actual events with that falcon.
13. Often, in my capacity as Director of Public Information, I had to deal with a lot of delicate and unpleasant situations that arise at the shelters. There were a variety of mistakes by shelter personnel, from vile and horrible ones to once in a while a legitimate mistake.
14. I wrote, hosted and produced a cable TV show for CACC entitled For Pet's Sake. I personally brought to Marilyn Blohm the paperwork for a dog named Charlie that I had personally reserved for the TV show. The card was marked with big yellow highlighted Do Not Put to Sleep with three phone numbers for me. Nonetheless, Manhattan shelter director Ben Gill told me Dr. Kopp instructed him to kill this animal. I told this to Marilyn. I said this is disgusting. I had found a home for this dog with an author who takes her dogs to her book signings. What is wrong here? I never got an apology. I never got an explanation. It was just swallowed into the crevasse. This happened again and again when I reserved dogs for the cable TV show and other shows I did. Dr. Kopp saw it as a threat to her authority that I was reserving animals. When I calmly confronted her at the Park Place office about one animal she killed that I had reserved she practically attacked me, screaming at me in front of the whole office staff. Marilyn knew about the incident, but to my knowledge, she never disciplined Dr. Kopp for it. Most of the animals I reserved were guaranteed homes, yet Dr. Kopp continued to kill them.
15. When I first arrived at CACC there were volunteers who were walking dogs, distributing posters, helping out, one volunteer got a dog run door donated at the Manhattanshelter. There was a real volunteer program. Around October 1996, there was a falling out between the administration and a group of these volunteers who went to the press and were critical of the conditions and policies at CACC that they had observed while inside. Immediately thereafter there was basically no volunteer program. They never started it up again, even after Marilyn Blohm arrived. Dr. Kopp hated the volunteers because they weren't part of her philosophy that mass killing had to be done, like culling the herd.
16. When I was at CACC shelter staff killed twenty-three animals that had been sterilized in anticipation of placing them for adoption.
17. The euthanasia rate was much higher than it should have been because the other steps that could have easily been taken were not taken. For example, the off-site adoptions program that I set up with ten pet shops around the city that agreed to take our animals on a daily or weekend basis was stonewalled and stalled by Doug Mansfield. SandraBatalla, our volunteer coordinator, had done a fantastic job of lining up volunteers that were ready to go. I pleaded with Doug repeatedly to approve this program to get it started. I even volunteered to go myself and help getting it started. Finally he said, well, let's try it with one place. The direct consequence of not instituting this program on a full scale was the deaths of thousands of shelter animals who could have otherwise been adopted out.
18. Almost all of the proposals I made to increase adoptions were ignored or rejected. I had written up an entire press and media plan for a two-year period. I has actually enlisted the Amazing Kreskin to be our celebrity spokesman for free. I had the designer Todd Oldam. I had the writer C.Z. Guest who was all ready to go with public service announcements for us as well as fundraising. I had designed a subway campaign. I proposed that the City give us a vacant space so we could create a CACC thrift shop and push all of our adoption materials, possibly have animals there and also sell donated items to benefit CACC. I had a proposal to go into the schools. These were all things I wrote up and presented. I spent my lunch hour putting up posters in the neighborhood, and other people started doing that. There was so much to do that didn't cost anything or was minimal, and whose benefits would have been tremendous. Marilyn and Doug never got behind any of these ideas. Later Doug wrote Kreskin a very dismissive letter and he was very hurt.
19. I wrote memos to Marty Kurtz, Doug Mansfield and Marilyn Blohm about the problematic conditions in the shelters. While Marty Kurtz was responsive and would often speak to me about them, Doug and Marilyn would not respond to my memos or my request for conversations.
20. Denise Brown, Joyce Clemmons, Jackie Casano, Jody Jones, Susan Kopp all have dozens of complaints against each of them from CACC staffers, volunteers and members of the public, both written and oral. There was no mechanism to document telephone complaints. Complaints came in every single day. Marilyn and Doug were aware of many of these and never fired the managers who toed the party line and shut up. They're all still there, while anyone who challenges management on euthanasia and other humane issues were fired. Both Sondra Batalla and I were not sneaking around, we would directly confront the source. I would tell Marilyn and Doug if I saw something amiss, I thought it was my duty to see that it didn't happen again. If you were honest you were not desired by management, but if you kept quiet you stayed on.
21. The police were constantly dropping off animals hogtied in the patrol car trunks, summer and winter. Many times muzzles were roped or taped unnecessarily limiting the animal's air supply. I had written up a proposal to do an education seminar for the cops. Then Dr. Kopp called Yolanda Jiminez, the Deputy Police Commissioner for Community Affairs and a CACC board member. But Dr. Kopp said she didn't want to "step on police toes." So the effort to improve police drop offs was just lost in the ether.
22. Police Emergency Services Unit often over-tranquilized animals, both dogs and cats and wildlife. They would arrive dead or die soon after arriving and CACC would have to take the heat, not ESU. Dr. Kopp said the police were very sensitive and "to go lightly on this one."
23. Early in 1998, I was informed by Marilyn Blohm that I wasn't being fired, because I was doing a wonderful job, but that she was going to change my position into public relations and fundraising. I know that under HR law, a way to get rid of an employee that you have no reason to fire is to change their job description. Now the job I was doing was going to be called Director of External Affairs, and Marilyn asked if I would be interested in applying for it. She advertised the job in the papers and for the next four months I was basically frozen out of the loop. Mrs. Blohm informed me that June 22nd was my last day because she hired another person. She handed me a confidentiality agreement that I had to sign if I wanted to receive a month's severance pay. As a matter of principle, I did not sign it.