What Is Lynn Schulman Hiding About That Aborted NYC ACC Oversight Hearing?
Last spring the City Council health committee chair postponed a scheduled hearing on the ACC "crisis." She still hasn't convened it, and won't say why.
The Scoop New York is a newsletter dedicated to covering the movement for a true no-kill New York State, from Buffalo to Brooklyn. NYC ACC KILLS, published by TSNY, enumerates and memorializes adoptable cats and dogs who were nonetheless exterminated by Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn
It’s February 28, 2025. This is The Weekly Poop.
This week, an alarming New York Post story [Is there some other kind of New York Post story? — Ed.] raised the prospect of bird flu infecting stray cats and, subsequently, humans, in New York City.
All right, so the story was actually published last Friday and wasn’t discovered by yours truly until after deadline. That was fortuitous, turns out, since the subject of this week’s column was already locked in.
Said subject would be City Council Member Lynn Schulman, who as chair of the council health committee is supposed to check and balance the city health department, which is in turn charged with ensuring all is well with the contractor currently known as Animal Care Centers of New York City.
Our story begins in spring 2024, when Schulman calendared a health committee meeting on “Animal Care Centers and the Shelter Capacity Crisis.” After The Scoop New York called attention to the hearing, Schulman canceled it, then said it would be rescheduled once the council and the mayor hashed out the city budget — thereby ensuring advocates would be unable to provide testimony in any coordinated way regarding the health department’s and ACC’s misuse of the kill pound system budget, including its $1B+ honeypot.
As foretold here, Schulman’s pledge to reschedule the hearing was a lie. Instead, she subjected citizen cat rescuers to a grueling and pointless day-long cry for help from the city.
TSNY reported that session, held last September, as an “ACC oversight hearing.” Since the health department controls ACC, and a competent, functional ACC would be the agency to provide cat rescue assistance (or — stay with me — maybe even a city TNR program?), an ACC oversight hearing is what it was.
But not, apparently, to Schulman. Sources tell TSNY that in private the council member took pains to make clear that the September cat rescue hearing was not take three of the preceding spring’s aborted session. This tracks with other sources who say the September hearing was, in fact, a stage-managed exercise in futility engineered by the council member to avoid airing NYC ACC’s dirty blood-soaked laundry in public.
The picture painted by the advocates TSNY has spoken with is this: Rather than convene a hearing where council members pretend to grill ACC CEO Risa Weinstock and a health department lackey — city health commissioners, see, are above the trifling business of ACC oversight; think Ashwin wants dog shit soiling his VIP CV? — Schulman convened a hearing where council members pretended to listen to cat rescuers who are, say, in danger of losing their homes because they are overwhelmed doing the job ACC and its City Hall and council overseers — Lynn Schulman and company — won’t.
We could do more than speculate, but New York City Council Member Lynn Schulman is not interested in answering to the public for what she does and does not do on New Yorkers’ dime. Multiple queries to Schulman’s office about last year’s shenanigans yielded exactly one response, from a flack who no longer holds the position, presumably because it’s very hard to concentrate on work when your pants are constantly erupting into flames.
Lynn Schulman is not interested in answering to the public for what she does and does not do on New Yorkers’ dime.
It gets better. A TSNY freedom of information request for copies of emails and other records related to the aborted spring oversight hearing, filed and re-filed multiple times since 2024 as the City Council FOIL officer tried to ignore it, only recently generated any kind of response: 200 pages of publicly available information and other flotsam, with relevant material redacted. As if we needed another reminder of the white-hot contempt New York electeds have for New Yorkers.
Schulman promised legislation would result from the September hearing. But since then the only animal-related bill TSNY has heard about from advocates is a proposal by Queens rep Robert Holden, introduced last month, for a pet food pantry pilot program. A search of City Council records revealed no other relevant bills sponsored or co-sponsored by Schulman since September.
We asked Schulman’s office if there was something in the hopper we might have missed, but, you know.
So here we are, just shy of a year since our saga began. If Schulman, to her mind, did not hold an NYC ACC oversight hearing last year, that means she is willfully if not spitefully neglecting her duties both as a council member and committee chair.
And if in the coming year H5N1 wipes out every single street-roaming cat in the city — and a few cat-loving New Yorkers in the process — well, Schulman will have solved that crisis after all, wouldn’t she?
Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:
Kathy Hochul’s plan to tighten Albany control over NYC in lieu of firing Eric Adams is probably not happening. As a firsthand witness to the imperious reign of Sheldon Silver, this does not make me sad.
Meanwhile, with Adams’ administration in limp mode as personnel resign left and right, weeds are tumbling through City Hall.
NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, related to Eric Adams not by blood but rather disinterest in doing much of anything for the city’s homeless companion animals, is prepping to enter the increasingly crowded (and interesting, tbh) mayor’s race. As is this malignant POS.
As noted above, NYC Council rep Bob Holden intro’d a bill to establish a boro-wide pet food pantry pilot, which advos are mulling as you read.
Related: Yet more promising news for cats and dogs and rabbits and guinea pigs just trying to survive in The Greatest City in the World™.
Actual good news: Cooper was eventually adopted by the man who took him to NYC ACC after the “freezing, terrified” 4-year-old pup was dumped outside a Brooklyn NYPD precinct house.
Ontario County Humane Society recently reopened its shelter after a parvovirus outbreak killed six dogs, including four puppies and two adults.
School kids made more than a dozen blankets for animals housed at Smithtown Animal Shelter.
A NYC carriage operator charged for allegedly abusing horse Ryder, who died soon after the incident, had his eventual wrist-tap delayed.
Horse racing: still dirty, still deadly, still redneck.
And finally: Well played, Archie. Well played.
This week in NYC ACC horrors
Adoptables
NYC ACC is working half-time again this weekend with just one mobile adoption event, in Manhattan.
Percy the goat, and his bonded friend Cleopatra (also a goat), are looking for greener pastures at Lollypop Farm in Rochester.
Princess and Koda, a pair of pups recently saved from an alleged abuser in Brentwood after “multiple complaints” to authorities, are available at Islip Animal Shelter.
Found in a box on a slushy Brooklyn sidewalk, Cooper, pictured above with Princess, was taken in by Eccentric Kittens rescue in Bed-Stuy, and is ready for a new chapter.
Find New York adoptables near you on Dogs in Danger and Adopt a Pet.
The Scoop New York attempts to confirm that animals are still available before we feature them in The Weekly Poop. If an animal you see here has already found a home, consider asking about other available adoptables.
Food recalls
The FDA announced no new pet food recalls this week.
Check here for info on earlier recalls.