The Furr's Still Flying

We told you recently about the Chavez administration's continuing problems with fuzzy math (read it here and here). They seem to have problems with numbers in just about every department and frankly if the 11th floor claimed that there were 24 hours in a day, we'd ask to see a clock. Now they seem to be tailoring reports to specific councilor's sensibilities (or lack thereof).

Monday, the Albuquerque Journal reported that a four page report - meant to justify the mayor's shakeup over at Animal Control and convince the council to release some $4 MILLION in funding that had been frozen in response to the shakeup - had been tailored in an effort to please one councilor.

The administration's initial four-page report was cut in half at the request of Councilor Sally Mayer. The final document failed to include criticism of the old animal-care leadership team— information the administration had included to bolster its case for hiring a new director.

In an interview last week, Mayer, who supported the previous leadership, said the parts she objected to were misleading.

"I said, 'This is insulting,' '' Mayer said. "It was a big spin campaign."

-ABQ Journal Subscription

The Mayer didn't like the idea that the administration's report included information that was less than flattering to the previous manager and her staff. First of all, we don't know what the heck Ed Adams was doing having a councilor approve a report to council. Second, the thing was four whole pages?! If your average mid-schooler showed up with a book report of four pages they'd probably be spending more time in mid-school than they'd like (except at APS but that's another story).

Remember, this report was supposed to justify the major shakeup over at animal control and almost half of the original report was characterized by The Mayer as "spin." So... the council takes definitive action freezing $4 MILLION and demands an accounting of the administration's actions and Mayor Chavez's team comes up with four pages. That's $1 MILLION per page - $2 MILLION per page for the submitted report. Apparently, even the councilors noted the lack of report in the report.

City councilors seemed surprised recently when the administration presented a two-page report on plans to improve animal care.

"This is the report?" two councilors asked during a November meeting, sounding surprised and disappointed.

- ABQ Journal (Subscription)

We've been baffled by this whole shakeup thing and suspicious of the apparent rift between The Mayer and the mayor from the very beginning. It almost seemed to be a fight over who was going to take credit for making Albuquerque a live exit city.

From the numbers we saw the shelter was making substantial gains before the shakeup. After the shakeup the new director claims credit and follows up by inflating numbers at an adopt-a-thon that was by all accounts successful without the fuzzy fib.

There really doesn't seem to be any justification for what the mayor did when he sacked the previous management and even less justification for what The Mayer did afterwards. Why lead the charge to freeze money for Animal Control only to accept a substandard report as justification as long as it didn't speak ill of the people that it was supposed to justify replacing?

Yeah, we know... bizarre doesn't even begin to describe recent events.

More Fuzzy Math for our Furry Friends

Apparently, we're not the only ones being treated to suspicious numbers from Albuquerque's Animal Control, Care, Welfare - whatever. According to the Albuquerque Journal the Alliance for Albuquerque Animals has been receiving statistics from Animal Control that don't jive with the numbers being fed the media.

A nonprofit advocacy group apparently received bad information from Albuquerque's animal shelters in response to public-information requests.

Debbra Colman, founder of the Alliance for Albuquerque Animals, said she believes the misinformation was deliberate.

"I'm profoundly disturbed that for three years the Alliance has been given false information," she said. "It just doesn't make any sense that the reports could have inadvertently been wrong rather than deliberately falsified."

-ABQ Journal (Subscription)

We wouldn't expect the city to cop to playing with numbers so as expected Chief Operating Officer, Ed Adams turned on the spin cycle.

Ed Adams, the city's chief operating officer, said a question about the accuracy of reports is part of the reason the mayor shook up the animal program last year. Mayor Martin Chávez last fall brought in new leadership for the shelters and made the program a stand-alone department in city government, meaning it reports directly to his office.

The bad formulas were developed before Patterson took over, Adams said.

-ABQ Journal (Subscription)

Yeaaaah... that's it! That's the reason the "mayor shook up the animal program last year"... bad formulas... that's the ticket! Now with Marty's new regime in place everything is above board and they've "got nothing to hide."

It appears that Director, Patterson's "nothing to hide" assertion isn't strictly true as we've received more evidence that the Journal story from Christmas Eve sounded better than it really was. The story by Journal reporter Jack King claimed that the Home 4 the Holidays adopt-a-thon left "Albuquerque's east- and west-side shelters [with] no animals available for adoption— all found homes at a weekend event."

Our Eyes tell us that the adopt-a-thon was held December 21st through the 23rd and that a few days after the event 67 dogs and 55 cats were still available before December 24th.

-Eye On Albuquerque

Today we received numbers from the Alliance for Albuquerque's Animals that shows that as of December 26th three days after the event, there were 41 cats and 87 dogs still available for adoption. The review date included suggests that all of these animals were available at the time of the Home 4 the Holidays event.

(Sidebar)
We're not suggesting that the Watermelon Mountain Ranch knew anything about the numbers being touted by the city. In fact, we don't want to do anything to discourage volunteerism at our city-owned shelters. However, we do believe that the city has both a legal and ethical obligation to tell us the truth about their successes and their failures.
(End Sidebar)

We've posted our latest information here. As you can see this report shows the impound number, review date, sex, spade or neuter status, animal evaluation, breed; and is broken out in to cats and dogs available in either the East or West side shelters on 12/26/07. While it's true that these numbers don't exactly match the ones we previously reported, they are close enough and they bear out that indeed there were animals available for adoption after the adopt-a-thon.

We really don't understand the administration's need to overstate the success of an event that had by all accounts been a tremendous success without having to inflate the figures. Kudos to the Watermelon Mountain Ranch folks and everyone who worked their tails off to place animals in good homes; they deserve better than fuzzy math for our furry friends.

Fuzzy Math

We've seen it in the past - the Chavez administration inflating the success of the scam-era program (read it here) and flat out lying about the number of sworn police officers over at APD (read it here). We saw it just today - the Chavez administration caught once again "overstating" the numbers when it comes to claims of progress in reducing Albuquerque's carbon emissions (ABQ Journal - Subscription).

(Sidebar)
Lest you believe that we are buying into the whole man made global warming political scare movement - we're not. While temperatures may be on the rise, we're not ready to turn over the keys to our economic engine to a bunch of scientists and zealots whose consensus is that man is responsible for rises in global temperatures. Twenty-five years ago a similar group believed that we were headed into another ice age. There's a huuuuge difference between scientific consensus and scientific fact.
(End Sidebar)

While the Journal managed to expose the Almighty Alcaldes's greenhouse gas, they've been gobbling up stories about Albuquerque's Animal Control fed to them by former Journal reporter and current $70,000 a year Marty Man, Jim Ludwig.

(Sidebar)
This is a case where The Almighty Marty took a page from Big Bill's playbook. Hiring a former reporter allows him to shape public opinion by getting favorable stories into the mainstream media and mitigate damaging stories when they occur. It's sheer genius on the part of the politician but MSM consumers have to remember that it creates a cozy if not obvious relationship between the media outlets and the politicians that the former reporters now represent.
(End Sidebar)

Let's take a look at the first of three stories recently run by Jim Ludwig's former co-workers. In the December 13th story "Good News for Critters" by Dan McKay (Subscription), the administration makes incredible claims that live exits from shelters are up 14% and euthanasia is down 19%. The Eyes have it that while the shelter has made gains, the numbers are no where near 14% and 19%. In fact, the numbers we've seen are live exit increase of 9% ('07 LE 44%/'08 LE 53%) and a euthanasia decrease of 9% ('07 EUTH 56%/'08 EUTH 47%) over the same September - October - November time period.

What's more interesting is that Chavez and crew are claiming that these gains are due to Marty's creation of a director's level position over at Animal Control. Back in September, The Almighty One fired (or more precisely, reassigned) former Animal Control supervisor Denise Wilcox replacing her with Jeanine Patterson; whose background is nursing not animal husbandry. McKay's article claims that these gains are since September, but in reality the numbers for July and August are almost identical to those from September through November meaning Marty's change had nothing to do with the improvements.

The second story by D'Val Westphal (a bit of a Marty-phite herself) entitled "City's Toasting Animal Welfare Revamp This Year," makes another set of claims that don't seem to hold up to scrutiny.

Four months ago, Mayor Martin Chávez ordered a shakeup of what was then Animal Services. He says when he learned almost 1,500 healthy animals got sick in the shelters this year and ended up being euthanized and disposed of like so much garbage, he had to do something major.

- ABQ Journal (Subscription)

Here's the problem... The claim that 1,500 animals that "became sick while in the shelter" is disputed by our Eyes. They claim that only 382 healthy dogs became sick while in the shelter. Now... we know that we didn't mention cats but even if a plague of biblical proportions hit the shelter we have a hard time buying that 1,118 cats or other animals made up the difference.

Moving on to the final PR piece dutifully placed by Jim Ludwig and printed by the Journal "Animal Shelters are Empty".

For the first time in their history, the city of Albuquerque's east- and west-side shelters have no animals available for adoption— all found homes at a weekend event.

More than 500 dogs and cats were adopted at Home 4 the Holidays, held Friday, Saturday and Sunday in a parking lot at Cottonwood Mall, said Mike Davis, communications director of Watermelon Mountain Ranch, a no-kill shelter in Rio Rancho that was one of several sponsors.

-ABQ Journal (Subscription)

This according to our Eyes was the most egregious exaggeration of all. Our Eyes tell us that the adopt-a-thon was held December 21st through the 23rd and that a few days after the event 67 dogs and 55 cats were still available before December 24th. Further, the Eyes have it that while the press was treated to visuals of an empty kennel in building A, the animals were moved into the other two kennel buildings in order to create the illusion of an empty kennel for a media eager to see our beloved dogs and cats placed in happy homes.

Frankly, we'd love to see every healthy animal that doesn't pose a danger to society placed in happy homes too. However, it's more important to us that the city and the Chavez administration tell us the truth - regardless of how it affects their political future.

One thing that we are able to confirm is that Animal Control (yes... we know the benevolent Marty calls it Animal Welfare, a marketing move if we've ever seen one) seems to be in chaos. Despite the recent mending of the rift between The Mayer (Councilor Mayer) and the mayor, nothing seems to have substantively improved since The Almighty One took complete control (and credit) of the now Animal Welfare Department. In fact, there are currently a number of law suits filed against the city that seem to indicate that at the very least, things aren't as rosy in the kennels as The Almighty Alcalde would have us believe.

More importantly, it's hard to believe that the administration is telling us anything resembling the truth when it comes to any kind of statistical data. Claims of red light scam-eras reducing accidents - not true. The claim of almost 1,100 APD officers - not true. Claims of the City of Albuquerque reducing its greenhouse gas emissions - not true. Now it seems that our furry friends are being used to make us believe we are not only a greener Albuquerque but a kinder, gentler one as well.

The folks on the 11th floor and the one who leads them are giving us the best argument that we can think of for term limits. The more entrenched mayors are, the more likely they are to bend, break, and/or ignore the rules. Even when they're not taking liberties with legal and ethical standards, they're busy using their own version of fuzzy math; hoping that no one will notice that their claims cannot be supported by hard statistical data. When challenged, they simply claim that was an unintentional error and act like it never happened.

A few things to remember... This is the mayor that brought us the ABQ PAC scandal - yet, we re-elected him. This is the mayor that brought us the evidence room scandal - yet, we re-elected him. This is the mayor that wants to strike down term limits for himself. The question is if he is successful, are we foolish enough to put the reigns of power back in his scandal-covered hands and are we willing to continue to accept his fuzzy math?