Dear Mayor Mamdani: Patrick Nolan's Reign of Terror Must End
A cesspool of corruption and waste, ACC is the antithesis of the NYC Mamdani claims to envision. Longtime board chair Nolan embodies the rot.
The Scoop New York is a website and newsletter covering the movement for a true no-kill New York State, from BUF to BK. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s January 24, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, a dark cloud lingered over NYC DOH land.
Not the ash cloud bearing the cremains of tens of thousands of past and future family pets happily destroyed by Chief Extermination Officer Risa Weinstock and her even-lesser DOH dunderlings at NYC ACC. Au contraire, mindless deadly violence visited upon the city’s most vulnerable is the very air they breathe over at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene [sic]. Given the choice, they prefer it.
What they don’t like at DOH, apparently, is uncertainty. And DOH big shots are getting a rancid taste of the fear they so love to dish out courtesy of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who reportedly isn’t high on his inherited acting health commish, Dr. Michelle Morse.
From Politico:
Sources familiar with the current state of play tell Playbook that Mamdani has for months been weighing replacing Morse, with an interview process ongoing. But the wait for a decision from the mayor has prompted some unease inside the agency, according to a city government source, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Yes, yes. Go on.
Mary Bassett, who served as city health commissioner under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, has been under consideration by Mamdani, three sources close to the mayor’s transition said. Morse is also actively campaigning to keep her job, but it wasn’t clear Thursday who’s most likely to get it.
And so we meet again, Dr. Bassett.
I don’t have to tell you that, in 4.5 years as de Blasio’s DOH commissioner, Bassett did nothing to improve conditions at NYC ACC. She moved on to Harvard, as one does, before Governor Kathy Hochul named her state health commish, in late 2021. Bassett resigned her NYS post 13 months later to return to Harvard, whence she was recently ejected because daddy said so.
As Mamdani reportedly mulled mounting yet another de Blasio retread, DOH/ACC was busy not-busy orchestrating the biannual dog and pony show that is the ACC board meeting.
Per usual, this week’s performance was conducted by board chair Patrick Nolan, who schmoozes as an executive at Penguin Books when he isn’t overseeing the obliteration of 40,000+ healthy and adoptable cats and dogs, as Nolan has since he assumed the position days after Barack Obama officially renewed his lease on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. For you youts, that’d be all the way back in January 2013 — the apex of Post-Racial America. Lulz.
Like every bully, from playground punk to tin-pot dictator (and tin-pot dictator wannabe), Patrick Nolan is above all a coward.
Unless you had the time, money and physical ability to make the trip to ACC’s shithole Queens outpost, you didn’t see this week’s ACC board meeting. Just as you have never seen any ACC board meeting unless you blocked out the hours and forked over the resources to bear witness to Nolan and company’s dirty business in the flesh. Because in the year 2026, DOH’s ACC, unlike every other government entity on the planet, doesn’t livestream its public meetings, where New Yorkers can most conveniently see and participate in them. Because ACC is so corrupt that its minders at the nation’s largest, most self-important municipal health department flagrantly discriminate against their own constituents — poor, disabled and/or elderly New Yorkers, especially — to keep them in the dark about what happens at the city kill pound and, ergo, prevent them from effecting long-overdue reforms.
Except: DOH did have ACC stream board meetings, public comments and all, during COVID. When I asked ACC designated liar Katy Hansen why the board doesn’t stream meetings post-COVID, Hansen said “we” “prefer” to hold meetings “in person.” As if what staffers for a public agency funded with public ducats prefer to reveal to that public has fuck-all to do with anything.
Reality check for Hansen et al.: Nobody gives a shit what you prefer. This ain’t Melville. You ain’t Bartleby.
From freshman English lit — they don’t hand out BAs at UNC Greensboro for no reason — we segue back to the star of his own show, and yours, too: Mr. 40K his splendid self.
Minutes into the Wednesday proceedings, the Honorable Mr. Nolan thusly pre-admonished the handful of New Yorkers who had the audacity to overcome every DOH/ACC trap door and trip wire to be there:
We limit you to two minutes. That’s enough time to make a statement, ask a question or two. Please honor that and also be civil. Anyone who I consider to be uncivil we’ll have to just ask you to stop, and we’ll actually end the public comment section. So don’t ruin it for everyone.
I think being civil here is an easy bar.
This guy, amirite?
Stuff happened at the board meeting. Nothing happened at the board meeting. DOH and ACC staffers told a buncha lies and rattled off a buncha unvetted and therefore useless data. The NYPD board rep called in sick, as NYPD reps regardless of venue can be counted on to do, when they deign to call in at all. The Parks rep was also a no-show. As was a newly-appointed member who skipped his first meeting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Nolan warned the room that he considers two (unnamed) nominees offered for Mayor Mamdani’s consideration to be “excellent candidates,” meaning DOH upended some rocks to round out the roster with more pro-kill worms who have tacitly or explicitly agreed to abuse New Yorkers every chance they get, just the way DOH, ACC and Patrick Nolan like ‘em.
All in all, then, it was a typical meeting of the NYC DOH ACC board.
It is past time for this twisted spectacle to end. Relieving Patrick Nolan of his high hobby horse would be a good start.
Nolan’s role in the City Hall/City Council/DOH/ACC kayfabe hierarchy is to bully New Yorkers who dare question how the city is spending their money. To slap down New Yorkers who have the chutzpah to politely request that the city stop torturing and killing the animals they’re paid to protect. It’s a job for bottom-feeders, and it’s one Nolan clearly relishes.
Because Patrick Nolan is full of his own medicine. He’s a self-serious buffoon. A caricature. A type. The crusty college dean who gets the starch taken out of his shorts at the end of every bad 1980s frat movie. A malevolent clown who unwittingly or not presents as a professional starfucker eternally thirsty for unearned adulation.
I sent Nolan a list of questions this week. Here they are:
That there was no response, same as every prior attempt, is a given. Because like every bully, from playground punk to tin-pot dictator (and tin-pot dictator wannabe, ahem), Patrick Nolan is above all a coward.
While he has no qualms helping DOH and ACC maliciously disenfranchise New Yorkers, no problem shouting down those New Yorkers in public, Nolan isn’t about to step face to face with someone who gives zero Fs about his position or marrow-deep sense of entitlement.
There is nothing “civil” about pissing on people while insisting, snottily, that it’s raining. Nothing civil about coercion, squelching dissent, ageism, ableism, classism, or generally being a pompous prick to people you know won’t push back. Nothing civil about telling lies on behalf of other liars. Needless to say, there is no evidence of a single civilized act occurring behind closed doors at DOH’s ACC for more than 30 years.
Nolan is a tired act way beyond its expiry date. He is the past. The bad old days. His narcissism and insatiable desire to be one of the beautiful people won’t allow him to step aside, and DOH bigs aren’t about to replace their enforcer, Nolan being every bit as broken and grotesque as they are.
But if Mamdani is what he claims to be, he will read Nolan like a book, and finally ship him off. With the remainders. Where he belongs. Where he has always belonged.
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized by the government, but not both.
“Affordability” Governor Kathy “Affordability” Hochul officially announced her $260B plan to do jack to help NYers who pay out of pocket to do her job for her and screw over those who suffer life-altering injuries at the hands of reckless drivers because it’s what her paymasters want.
Why not throw another log on the Kathy Hochul Is Corrupt as She Is Inept fire. Plenty to go around.
Promising “fulsome oversight,” NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin told reporter Errol Louis to expect council hearings regarding Eric Adams-era “no-bid contracts … given out to various entities with little to no scrutiny.” If you’re going fulsome on sweetheart no-bid handouts issued by corrupt ex-mayors, madame speaker, go the full fulsome.
Authorities in Yonkers are looking for the individual(s) who last November slit a dog’s throat and left him to die near Oakland Cemetery. (The dog, named Frankie by rescuers, is recovering.)
An Erie County vet who facilitated the theft of a family pet pled guilty to falsifying business records (Class A misdemeanor) and companion animal stealing (unclassified misdemeanor) and will get a wrist tap because as a UM stealing a pet is barely a crime in New York State.
As of this writing, Suffolk County prosecutors have charged this alleged serial abuser with one count of misdemeanor animal torturing, according to court records reviewed by yours truly.
Speaking of thievery and animal abuse: ASPCA tossed some of its ill-gotten resources toward what it says is a recovery center for abused dogs, in Pawling. Tell it to Oreo. Dirty sticky-fingered chuds.
State troopers pulled a woman and her dog from an icy canal in Little Falls, in Herkimer County.
Finally, it’s a 12-yo piece, but "dogs preferred to excrete with the body aligned along the north–south axis" is what we in the biz call evergreen.
Food recalls
FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.
Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.