I can sympathize with those who feel the GM search process has been going on too long and in the dark.
However, my sources as mentioned in an earlier post, indicate the actual search process has not yet started, and the headhunter is still in the process of establishing a job description based on email questionaires sent to me and many others in the LA Animal Community.
Most of the people that ADL has suggested be part of the search committee will be contacted during the actual search process and some have been contacted in the job description stage. The headhunters already know which websites should be targeted once the actual search process begins.
When the search begins, it will be posted far and wide.
So my concern is not with this factfinding stage, nor whether a lot of people be informed about the job opening. My concern is the selection process itself. I think at that time people like Winograd and Batista and others should be allowed input to whomever does the winnowing at each stage.
This process might work, as long as the incompetent administrators inside LAAS are not involved in the process; however, after the Boks fiasco by the Mayor's office, how can one trust either him or his advisers? Not only did they not conduct a search when they hired Boks, Boks did not even meet the qualifications of the job!
ReplyDeleteBoks's hiring is an embarassment that the Mayor's office will never live down. The sad part is that none of them to this day take any ownership or responsibility for what they did.
Boks is hardly the only issue.
ReplyDeleteLet's start with Linda Barth, who, as Assistant General Manager, makes more than the GM, because of seniority - seniority achieved via other City departments.
Barth is only at LAAS because she screwed up big time at Recreation and Parks, but had too much clout to be fired. So, as is always the way, the animals got hammered by having someone put in charge of their fate who knows and cares nothing about their welfare.
It's a big question as to whether or not nominal GM Kathy Davis is even really running things, or if it's actually Barth. Certainly it's no question that since Davis only joined the department in May 2008 after a not-exactly-animal-oriented career as Director of Code Compliance in Dallas, Texas she has been pretty much a cipher. She sits in Animal Services Commission meetings like a student auditing a class, rather than the head of a major city department.
The department is a mess from the top down, but if any change is to be made two things need to happen:
Barth needs to be fired. She is absolute poison to healthy functioning and certainly change. Don't forget the famous vote of no confidence by LAAS employees in their leadership wasn't just about Boks; Linda Barth was specifically cited as incompetent and retaliatory. Her main form of interaction is the threat, and a department with no morale is a department that can't change.
The second thing that needs to happen is the unions need to stop protecting cruel and incompetent employees. I'm not in any way anti-union, but when unions protect employees who slack off, who abuse animals, who deliberately break the rules (including improperly disposing of animals through theft or improper, undocumented killing) then they have gone far from their real job, which is to protect good workers, not bad ones.
And not for nothing, but since I'm here, let's stop giving outrageously disproportionate influence to people like Phyllis Daugherty. The woman camps out at City Hall and in City Council offices and as far as I can see no one has ever verified that she has one real credential to talk about animals. I've seen her make ridiculously ignorant comments about Pit Bulls, and let's not forget that it was her malignant and stupid letter that led to the City Council attacking rescues because they were unfathomably led to believe, by Daugherty, that somehow rescues make a "profit" of cats and dogs they pull from city shelters.
Daugherty makes up a one-page website and our city officials are ready to believe she's an expert? Doesn't any one of them ever ask if she has an actual job? What kind of genuine expert has every weekday free to devote to hanging out at City Hall? Real experts have jobs, don't they?
What we really need is someone in the Mayor's office who actually does care about animals, as opposed to flunkies who care about protecting Villaraigosa's joke of a job, and finagling jobs on the Animal Services Commission for friends of his girlfriend. It would also help if LAAS wasn't a dumping ground for bureaucrats who've exhausted all their other options.
Excellent post on November 25. Regarding the Unions protecting employees, they can only do so much. Employees can be disciplined, including termination, even under Civil Service. Unfortunately, in this Department, the Personnel Director who should be handling these matters is totally "out to lunch", and either does not have a clue or desire to discipline department employees, which I guess goes to the last point on that post, LAAS being a dumping ground for bureaucrats. All the good administrators leave and the incompetent ones stay and do nothing. Why? Because no one holds them accountable for their actions or should I say inactions. Also, they have employees in leadership positions who have been there 25-30 years that still talk about how great things were during the Robert Rush era. These people need to be removed or just let them sit at a desk with nothing to do. It sure beats the alternative of letting them out of their cages with their 70's mentality. Talk about the stone age.
ReplyDeleteHow the "search" process really works
ReplyDeleteVillaraigosa accepts bribes for jobs