Will Any NYC Pol Take Responsibility for Failing, Contract-Breaking, Mass-Killing NYC ACC?
Another ACC shutdown, another CYA moment for the politicians elected to oversee it.
Editor’s note: The Weekly Poop will return to its regular format next Friday. For now, please enjoy this super-sized editorial. Thanks for everything. — BA
This week, New York City electeds and their underlings reaffirmed what NYC ACC watchers have long known: if the majority of city pols agree on one thing, it’s that homeless and abandoned cats and dogs, and New Yorkers who advocate for them, may as well not exist.
On Monday, the contractor currently known as Animal Care Centers of New York City closed its doors to animals, in violation of its “open admission” mandate. The latest shutdown was for dog intakes. Again.
It’s not unusual for ACC to periodically cease serving the public in one way or another. Unusual would be for city officials to notice, much less take remedial action. I covered New York City politics every day for more than a decade, and other than NYPD I can’t think of a city agency that pols are less interested in governing. Both are untouchable, though for very different reasons: NYPD basically runs NYC; ACC is the forgotten stepchild.
Make like a New York elected and forget homeless cats and dogs for a minute. Let’s say NYC hired a single garbage hauler to serve the entire city (private waste carting companies handle commercial customers; the city sanitation department works residential buildings). Now imagine that company is so poorly managed that several times a year it just … doesn’t do the job.
Picture City Hall quietly rewarding that same company with a new, 34-year, $1.4 billion contract, with minimal public input, after nearly 25 years of consistently poor service.
It would be a scandal visible from space. The city comptroller and City Council reps, whose job is to check the mayor’s power, would be knocking down newsroom doors to top one another’s show of outrage. There would be media releases, press conferences, hearings, probes. And rightly so.
But ACC’s current contract was fast-tracked by then-mayor Bill de Blasio and friends with as little public involvement as possible.
A search of the City Record yields just one public hearing on the new deal, held at 10 a.m. on a weekday in the middle of summer. The public comment period was 10 business days, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Reviewing the contract required a trip to DOH HQ in Long Island City during a weekday.
In 2018 there would be no legitimate reason for a pending city contract to be effectively inaccessible to the public, unless the fix was in.
If this story matters to you, please consider leaving a tip.
Plastic, PayPal or paper check. No Substack account required.
And “in” the fix was. In addition to City Hall’s shenanigans, records indicate that then-City Council health committee chair Mark Levine, who is now Manhattan borough president, held no council hearings on renewing ACC’s contract (which, again: 34 years, $1,487,966,471.00).
Related: If you’d like to see Levine heckuva-jobbing ACC CEO Risa Weinstock, here’s 167 minutes of it.
City Council Member Justin Brannan, who markets himself as the conscience of the council when it comes to animal welfare, chaired the contracts committee in 2018. He voiced no objections to the ACC contract publicly.
(Both Brannan and Levine intend to run for city comptroller in 2025.)
Scott Stringer, comptroller in 2018 and mayoral hopeful in 2024, also remained silent, though in 2013, when he was Manhattan borough president, he issued a scathing report that recommended a complete overhaul of ACC’s management structure. Stringer audited ACC in 2015, but did not follow up until 2020, the year after the contract took effect.
If this sounds like a conspiracy of silence to you, we have at least one thing in common.
The electeds who rubber-stamped the current contract were well aware of the constituency of New Yorkers who have long called for a shake-up at ACC. Thing is, caring for animals is not ACC’s raison dêtre. That would be shielding elected officials and City Hall bureaucrats from blowback over ACC’s 30-year cat and dog slaughter fest. While the people want what’s right, the politicians want what’s right for them.
ACC was set up this way deliberately, and when it came time to lock in the status quo for another three decades, not only did de Blasio, Levine, Brannan and Stringer et al. exclude the public, they blew off recommendations from a prominent no-kill expert to make conditions there safer and more tolerable.
Five years later it’s no surprise that ACC is the same as it ever was. The names of some of the players have changed but the game is still CYA, no matter the consequences to homeless and helpless cats and dogs or the New Yorkers who constantly worry for them.
And so, after Monday’s shutdown, the city health department, Comptroller Brad Lander and City Council health committee chair Lynn Schulman refused to address it or ignored questions about it altogether.
ACC spokesperson Katy Hansen hid like a frightened turtle, natch. Ditto Lynn Schulman, who TSNY also asked about legislation she promised to cat rescuers back in September, which has apparently not materialized.
Rather than answer TSNY’s questions, Eric Adams’ health department sent over ACC’s email address. Brad Lander's office emailed TSNY one sentence on background and a link to ACC audits by previous comptrollers.
Not one of the politicians responsible for ACC had anything to say about the agency denying help to their constituents for, as of this writing, five days and counting. Clearly, the $1.4 billion, the animals, and the New Yorkers who care about them aren’t that important.
It won’t be forgotten.