Pols Who Tacitly Blessed NYC ACC and Its $1.4B Contract to Compete for City Fiscal "Watchdog"
Justin Brannan and Mark Levine want to be comptroller after keeping mum about the ACC's 34-year boondoggle.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s November 22, 2024. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, New York City Council Member Justin Brannan officially announced that he is running for comptroller in 2025, joining Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and state Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar in the race to be the city’s next fiscal guardian.
The three will compete in the Democratic primary, where most of the voting action is likely to be.
“I want to continue my service as chair of the [City Council] finance committee,” Brannan told WPIX, “as someone who — a watchdog — who, you know, makes sure every dime of that budget gets put in the right place.”
Every dime! Wow!
We addressed the comptroller race a few weeks back, but now that Brannan has made it official, let’s refresh.
In 2018, then-mayor Bill de Blasio was hot to re-up the city’s deal with the non-profit contractor presently known as Animal Care Centers of New York City. In light of ACC’s near 30-year history of waste, corruption, and lethal violence toward helpless cats, dogs and other companion animals, de Blasio should have taken the opportunity to rid city taxpayers of an organization that, were it an actual city department rather than a de facto one, would have been reformed long ago.
This was no accident, since the distinction between actual and de facto is one of accountability vs. unaccountability. By keeping ACC on as hired help, electeds can continue to maintain a safe distance while occasionally tut-tutting for the cameras over the thousands and thousands of creatures who were, are and will be poisoned and burnt to cinders, as if ACC has massacred kittens and puppies for the last 30 years without the city’s imprimatur.
De Blasio should have taken the opportunity to rid city taxpayers of an organization that, were it an actual city department rather than a de facto one, would have been reformed long ago. This was no accident, since the distinction between actual and de facto is one of accountability vs. unaccountability.
It’s the comptroller’s job to check City Hall — the mayor — a responsibility shared with the City Council.
Brannan, a Queens rep who never turns away credit for being declared a friend to the animals, chaired the council contracts committee in 2018. If he had any qualms about locking in deadly ACC dysfunction for 34 years and well over a billion dollars, he did not share them.
Wouldn’t you know it, Brannan also lost his voice on the topic of his proposed Department of Animal Welfare, which the City Council and Lurch de Blasio quietly nixed in favor of a Potemkin do-nothing Office of Animal Welfare, raising not a peep from Brannan himself.
Mark Levine, at the time representing parts of the West Side and Upper Manhattan on the council, led the health committee in 2018. Since the city health department oversees the kill pound system, Levine was the council member with the most influence over and, if he was doing his job, most knowledge of, ACC and how it operates. Yet records indicate Levine called not even one council hearing on the ACC mega-deal. Instead, Levine spent the year playing footsie with ensconced ACC killing floor boss Risa Weinstock.
The wild card in the comptroller race, so far, is Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar. But maybe not really. Though in 2020 voters in Queens sent her to represent them in Albany, to this point Rajkumar may be best known to most New Yorkers as the woman in the red dress who seems at times welded to scandal-scarred mayor and fake-ass vegan Eric Adams. She also seems to not know what the comptroller actually does. Rajkumar thinks public parks should be private parking lots and adults should be imprisoned for weed. She might be the world’s first and only Eric Adams Democrat. In other words, given our brave new zeitgeist, she’s a lock.
Records indicate Levine called not even one council hearing on the ACC mega-deal. Instead, Levine spent the year playing footsie with ensconced ACC killing floor boss Risa Weinstock.
Regardless of who the next city comptroller is, when it comes to NYC ACC there is no guarantee they will be of any more use than the current one. Brad Lander was a City Council member for 12 years, won his current musical chair in 2021, and now wants to oust Adams from City Hall. During his one term as comptroller — this month, in fact — Lander confirmed his disinterest in prying the roof off ACC to see just what the hell Risa Weinstock and her flying monkeys are doing with all that public fundage. Prioritizing their four-legged charges they are not, and that is fine with Brad Lander.
Regardless of whether they honor their duties, the comptroller job is, in fact, watchdogging. And watchdogging done right means protecting the public from boondoggling. The job is to, you know, make sure every dime of that budget gets put in the right place.
That includes the $1,487,966,471.00 New Yorkers entrusted to NYC ACC.
Every. Dime.
If this story matters to you, please consider leaving a tip.
Plastic, PayPal or paper check. No Substack account required.
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
Hempstead officials are looking into handing over the town’s homeless companion animals to a petting zoo weirdo and the public is not having it.
Hundreds of people turned out for a Peanut and Fred memorial gathering in Elmira.
Evictions are a leading cause of pet abandonment, and New York City landlords are wilding out, harassing and illegally evicting tenants.
Related: As state lawmakers ignore ^, they also have no plans to prepare for, among other syphilitic brain worm-addled bullshit, a potential crush of newly homeless pets caused by mass deportations.
Albany tossed some scraps at shelters and rescues. Mission accomplished, etc.
The state police are looking into abuse allegations made against a rescue in St. Lawrence County where 44 dogs died in a recent fire. JFC.
If you’re looking to adopt some mice, here’s a lead.
If you’re reading this, you can probably skip this.
Oh no. Anything but that.
FOIL update
If you are a reporter and are more interested in reporting than taking dictation, NYC ACC spokesperson Katy Hansen — though it is, in fact, her job — does not want to speak with you. Not only that, ask her too many uncomfortable questions and Hansen will stop returning your emails.
If you call ACC’s main line and reach a human, they will tell you it is not physically possible for them to connect you to the communications office, or, for that matter, any higher ups at ACC HQ. Ask a second time because you’re unsure you heard correctly and you will receive the same response.
In addition to hiding from reporters who deny NYC’s municipal abattoir the courtesy of simply passing on whatever rancid caca ACC flings at them, another way ACC walls itself off from the people who pay them is by withholding the phone number to its public relations office from the public.
The NYC ACC communicators are incommunicado. They would like to stay that way because more public access means more people asking those troublesome uncomfortable questions.
Since 100 percent of New York City electeds could not care less about this, The Scoop New York filed a freedom of information request for the NYC ACC communications office phone number.
The request was filed and acknowledged on November 6.
“We are in receipt of your request, and it is being reviewed,” read ACC’s anonymized, but not automated, reply. “If your request is granted, any responsive documents will be provided within 20 business days of your request, or you will be advised if additional time is needed to complete your request.”
TL;DR: NYC ACC has given itself until December 6 to decide if it will release its phone number to the people who are forking over a billion-plus to keep the death chambers humming.
Adoptables
NYC ACC will hold mobile adoption events in Manhattan and Brooklyn this weekend.
Mocha (pictured above) is 10 years old and waiting for you at CNY SPCA in Syracuse.
Yankee (pictured above) and friends are available in Binghamton.
Find a New York adoptable near you on Petfinder.
Related: Huntington rescue Little Shelter is holding its “1st semi-annual” $25,000 raffle. Tickets are $100 and will be sold until January 4.
Food recalls
The FDA issued no new pet food recalls this week. Check here for info on earlier recalls.