Los Angeles: Where Failure Is Policy

Why LA Animal Services is built to fail—and who benefits when it does.

A Familiar Exposé

On May 30, the Los Angeles Times asked a provocative question: “She ran the L.A. animal shelters. Why couldn't she fix the problems?” The article chronicled the resignation of LA Animal Services General Manager Staycee Dains and the bureaucratic dysfunction that engineered it. It laid bare the extent to which LAAS has become paralyzed—not by indifference, but by a political infrastructure that punishes truth-telling, protects mediocrity, and renders ethical leadership untenable.

As a former GM of LAAS, I read the article with grim familiarity. What unfolded under Dains is not new. It is just the latest chapter in a long-running saga of institutional sabotage, bureaucratic ineptitude, and civic betrayal.

As one of the few people who has occupied that role, I am uniquely positioned to answer the question posed by the Times. This op-ed does just that—by pulling back the curtain on a system designed to fail anyone who tries to fix it.

Los Angeles: A city that disappears elephants in the dead of night, abandons Skid Row to chaos, and systematically silences reformers. (Images AI generated)

It's Not About Compassion—It's About Governance

In Los Angeles, it is not a lack of compassion that condemns animals to suffer in overcrowded, understaffed shelters. It is a failure of governance. Not within LAAS alone, but across the whole apparatus of city government—a bureaucracy so calcified by politics, cronyism, and legal inertia that reformers are cut off at the knees before they can speak, let alone act.

A System Designed to Expel Reformers

Dains didn’t resign. She was forced out—like every general manager before her who dared to push against the grain. But her departure isn’t the story. The real story is the system—deliberately structured to ensure any reformer will fail, no matter who holds the title.

This article isn’t a defense of Staycee Dains. Her appointment was controversial from the start; many questioned her experience, her approach, her priorities. But that’s precisely the point. If even a politically palatable candidate—handpicked and embraced by City Hall—can’t survive the machinery of Los Angeles government, then who can? The issue isn’t who’s appointed. The issue is that the system is engineered to ensure no reform-minded general manager can succeed.

Figureheads Tolerated, Reformers Expelled

Not every general manager falls on their sword. Brenda Barnett, who served from 2010 until her retirement in 2021, is proof. She never confronted the entrenched bureaucracy or challenged the status quo. And yet she stayed—long enough to claim credit for LA’s short lived “no‑kill” status and to build a partnership with Best Friends. That partnership ushered in a metrics-first ideology that sidelined prevention, distorted shelter priorities, and ultimately helped spawn the crisis we face today.

Her tenure wasn’t marked by reform so much as managed decline—where deterioration was tolerated, accountability was avoided, and dysfunction was normalized under the illusion of stability. It underscores the truth: Los Angeles doesn’t reject failure. It rejects challenge. The system tolerates those who play along—and crushes those who try to fix anything.

The beneficiaries of LAAS dysfunction aren’t the animals or the public—but the bureaucrats who resist accountability, the political actors who trade reform for optics, and the private organizations that thrive in the vacuum.

The Leadership Trap

The system doesn’t want leadership. It wants compliance. A GM who acts boldly alienates bureaucrats. A GM who appeases the bureaucracy fails the public. The advocates demand action, while City Hall demands silence. That’s not a leadership challenge—it’s a trap. One designed to ensure every GM is either scapegoated or sidelined, while the machinery of failure grinds on undisturbed—GM after GM.

My Experience with this Machine

When I served as General Manager of LAAS, I confronted the same entrenched forces that ultimately sabotaged Dains. Unions that resist accountability. A personnel department more invested in process than performance. A Commission more focused on ingratiating themselves with departmental critics or preserving their public image than advancing real animal welfare. City council members who treat the department as a political football. And a Mayor’s Office that embraces reform rhetoric, but often leaves reformers politically exposed, isolated, and easy to scapegoat.

The Isolation of Reformers

When first appointed, I offered to help Dains—pro bono. Initially welcomed by Dains and Deputy Mayor Jacqueline Hamilton, I was soon met with silence. That silence, I now understand, was strategic—a feature of a system that sees truth-tellers as liabilities.

I am far from alone in this: many local advocates have confided that they have offered their time, expertise, and treasure to help LAAS—only to be ignored or sidelined. This is more than a symptom of dysfunction; it is a disease that isolates reformers, shields saboteurs, and perpetuates a bureaucracy where failure is rewarded and accountability is feared.

But reformers in LAAS have never faced opposition from inside City Hall alone. A fractured and often vitriolic local animal welfare community—more invested in personal crusades than systemic change—has also played a role. Instead of supporting reform, some advocates made a sport of attacking reformers, ensuring General Managers spent more time putting out fires than saving animals. This culture of sabotage doesn’t just isolate reformers—it distorts reality around them, creating a fog of conflicting narratives that serves only those in power.

Governance by Gaslight

For example, during Dains’ tenure, she was reportedly told by Deputy Mayor Hamilton not to publicize the dire conditions inside the shelters. Yet the Mayor’s spokesperson, Zach Seidl, now claims she was supported in communicating those very truths. This contradiction is not mere miscommunication; it is governance by gaslight—a tactic that creates plausible deniability for the powerful while discrediting those who speak out.

Why the need for deniability? Because City Hall isn’t committed to reform—it is committed to avoiding blame. Rather than support their own appointee, the Mayor’s Office stands back to see which way the wind will blow, distancing themselves from controversy while maintaining the appearance of engagement. If a GM succeeds, they can claim credit; if one fails, they can disown them.

It’s a political calculus that has undermined leadership at LAAS for decades. Dains is only the latest to be set up to fail—not by accident, but by design.

Private Influence, Public Consequences

Best Friends Animal Society, never shy about leveraging institutional chaos, declared Dains the "biggest barrier" to progress. This aligns with their national pattern: step into public shelter systems, discredit noncompliant leadership, and advance a narrowly defined agenda under the banner of lifesaving.

Their influence in LA was cemented under Barnette, in whom they found a cooperative partner. With Dains, they found resistance. That resistance was intolerable.

Best Friends’ role in LA has long operated without meaningful oversight—functioning with privileged access and political insulation, often shaping shelter policy in ways that serve branding and fundraising over operational integrity or animal welfare.

But Best Friends is not the only player in this dysfunction. The result of this ecosystem—where private interests are unchecked, public agencies are politicized, and leadership is expendable—is a culture where rank-and-file staff defy directives, reformers are cast out, and unqualified operatives pull strings from the shadows. The inmates run the asylum—with the Mayor and Personnel Department not just observing, but enabling.

A Blueprint for Reform

Turning LAAS around requires more than appointing a new general manager. It demands a structural overhaul—a legal and operational reengineering of how the City of Los Angeles governs its obligations to animals and the people who care about them.

First, the next GM must be empowered—not just in title, but in practice. That means enforceable commitments from the Mayor’s Office to publicly and politically back reform—even when it’s unpopular. It means streamlining and codifying the General Manager’s authority over staffing and operations, free from the procedural chokehold of the Personnel Department. And it means legal and administrative insulation from councilmember micromanagement and interference—so that decisions are made based on welfare and policy, not political pressure.

This must also extend to the Animal Services Commission, whose role should be to ensure transparency and accountability while actively supporting the department’s mission and leadership. This should include revisiting the Commission’s charter to ensure its members possess the expertise and independence necessary to support reform, uphold animal welfare standards, and serve as more than ceremonial oversight.

Second, transparency must become a legal standard—not a privilege granted at the discretion of political handlers. The public has an unqualified right to know what happens inside taxpayer-funded shelters: the conditions animals endure, the policies that govern their care, and the outcomes that result. General Managers must be empowered—and obligated—to speak candidly about both successes and failures without fear of political reprisal or administrative gag orders. Anything less is not just unethical; it is a deliberate obstruction of public accountability.

Third, all private organizations—including Best Friends—that seek to influence public agencies must be required to disclose their finances, contracts, and the extent of their policy influence. Public policy must not be shaped behind closed doors. No more shadow governance through grant-funded control, embedded consultants, or coordinated media campaigns designed to obscure accountability or intimidate public officials.

And finally, it is time for the City Attorney and Controller to investigate whether the dysfunction inside LAAS constitutes more than mismanagement. When public employees are silenced, when whistleblowers are retaliated against, when essential functions are neglected or willfully ignored, when private interests exert undue influence over public policy, and when those private actors materially benefit from helping to create that dysfunction—these are not just failures of leadership. They may be violations of law.

The Broader Collapse

If a city cannot protect its animals—beings wholly dependent on human care—what else is it failing to protect? Los Angeles is not just failing its shelters. It’s failing across the board. A city that secretly disappears elephants in the dead of night, abandons Skid Row to chaos, and systematically silences reformers is not a city governed by competence or conscience. It’s something else entirely.

LAAS is the dying canary in the coal mine—a visible warning of a city buckling under the weight of its own contradictions. The consequences are deadly. The optics, damning. Los Angeles isn’t failing because no one sees the problem. It’s failing because everyone does—and no one is willing to confront it.

Until this city faces the rot at its core, no agency will function, no reformer will survive, and no vulnerable life—animal or human—will be safe.

The question now isn’t whether Los Angeles is broken. It’s whether anyone in power has the courage to fix it—and whether the public has the will to demand it.

Ed Boks is a former Executive Director of the New York City, City of Los Angeles, and Maricopa County Animal Care & Control Departments, and a former Board Director of the National Animal Control Association. His work has been published in the LA Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Real Clear Policy, Sentient Media, and now on Animal Politics with Ed Boks.

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