Since Winograd was already in town, he offered to conduct a free assessment of BARC. Kent Robertson, who was BARC's director at the time, declined the offer.
Fast-forward two years, and the city once again found itself speaking with Winograd, only this time things seemed more promising. By December 2008, the only sticking point seemed to be the city's insistence that Winograd release it from all liability. In an e-mail to city personnel handling the terms of his contract, Winograd wrote: "Given that the contract value is only $5,000, I cannot agree to indemnification clauses."
Meanwhile, Barton told the media that state law did not allow cities to waive liability for contractors. Overall, Winograd said, "I've worked with dozens of municipalities over the years and have never quite encountered the bureaucratic inertia and hurdles that the City of Houston wanted me to jump through." This didn't mean the city didn't have their feelers out, though. During negotiations, Benjamin Hernandez, chief of staff of Health and Human Services, called Abigail Smith, the current director of the Tompkins County SPCA, to get an idea of what exactly becoming "no-kill" would involve
"I said, 'Don't jump off the edge of a cliff," Smith said. "You're going to need a lot of money. You're going to need a phenomenal facility. You're going to need huge community buy-in. You're going to need a ton of foster homes. And you're going to need a bunch of vets that are going to donate services to you.'"
That right there was probably enough to make BARC shudder.
But if the city wanted to decline Winograd again, it could have made a reasonable argument about Winograd's real track record, rather than trying to get him to sign a contract requiring prior restraint.
Winograd has carved out a sort of legend regarding his ascent to the top of the no-kill movement, which is perhaps best reflected in a 2006 Reader's Digest story, which begins: "When Nathan Winograd announced that he was leaving his posh job as a corporate lawyer in Marin County, California, to run an animal shelter in Tompkins County, New York, his father looked at him for a long minute. Then he said, 'What the heck do dogs and cats need a lawyer for?'" The story includes a picture of the noble Winograd walking along a beach with his dogs, Mr. Picklechips and Sir Topham Hat.
And in the bio for Redemption, Winograd is described as "both a former criminal prosecutor and corporate attorney." He has also described himself as "Director of Operations" for the San Francisco SPCA, perhaps the first major shelter to successfully implement the no-kill philosophy.
In truth, Winograd's law career was brief, according to the California State Bar, which shows that he held an active license for six years. He had stints as a prosecutor in Riverside and Marin counties (California) and was then a contract associate for a corporate firm between February 15, 2001, and May 15, 2001.
And in October 2008, a reporter for the Austin Chronicle was the first to shed light on his true capacity at the San Francisco SPCA. Reporter Patty Ruland checked with Winograd's former boss, Ed Sayres (now the head of the ASPCA), who explained that Winograd held the position of Director of Operations for a week and a half before resigning.
Ruland quickly learned what happens to those who dare ask questions about Winograd's claims: They are summarily scorned. Before Ruland's story ran, Winograd blasted her on his blog, accusing her of asking "inflammatory and defamatory" questions.
Winograd regularly criticizes anyone who does not swallow his no-kill philosophy — no matter how much experience they have in the world of animal control and welfare. For example, Kate Hurley, a veterinarian who teaches shelter medicine at the University of California-Davis Veterinary School, has a "pro-killing agenda" because she has suggested that some no-kill shelters have simply warehoused animals.
And just a few days after Winograd spoke with the Press, he blogged about how this paper's line of questioning was based solely on the claims of one of his most vocal critics, a private citizen with the audacity to disagree with Winograd.
Under the heading "A Smear Campaign," Winograd wrote: "The line of questioning was based on the rumor and innuendo of No Kill detractors like Pat Dunaway in order to undermine my efforts and maintain a policy of killing in our shelters. No lie is too grand and no contradiction too obvious for them."
Winograd apparently believes a reporter can't ask tough questions of him based on simple internet searches or interviews with other sources. No, it is the work of the ubiquitous Pat Dunaway, a California woman who has criticized Winograd on various shelter-related blogs. Winograd has also accused Dunaway of being behind the Austin Chronicle's critical story.
Winograd's brand of no-kill is based on the belief that animal overpopulation is a myth. Theoretically, he writes, we could be "a no-kill nation tomorrow." It's because of this certainty that Winograd was actually able to include in his book a list of the types of people who will disagree with his arguments, why they will mistakenly disagree with those arguments and why they are therefore dumb people.
One of his favorite arguments is that the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the United States — the big, evil moneymaking machines — put the onus of animal welfare on the public. In Winograd's world, there is virtually no irresponsible public; it's all a smokescreen for incompetent shelter directors who are perpetually set to "kill." One wonders what Winograd might make of a trip down what local animal advocates call the "Corridor of Cruelty" along Little York, where backyard breeders sit in un-air-conditioned, bombed-out former convenience stores, peddling crates of unaltered puppies struggling to catch a breeze from a floor fan.
Perhaps it's because Winograd has had the good fortune not to have actually worked at an animal shelter for longer than three years. Which is not to say he's incapable of greatness.
Winograd truly loves animals — perhaps a little too much. (One of his accomplishments as director of the Tompkins County SPCA was to create a space for owners and their dogs to get side-by-side massages, an event he once described in an interview as "romantic." Winograd is also in favor of trapping, neutering and releasing feral cats with feline HIV.) But it's this intense love of animals that has made him able to energize those around him.
Of course, he had some help. Tompkins County is home to Cornell University, which runs one of the best vet schools in the country. One of Cornell's alums is David Duffield, founder of Maddie's Fund, one of the largest philanthropical foundations in the country devoted to animal care. A lot of Duffield money flowed into the Tompkins County SPCA. (Also, the Tompkins County SPCA takes in around 3,000 animals a year, about one-seventh the volume of BARC.)
Winograd told the Press he left Tompkins County in order to move his family back to California to be close to his wife's dying father. Four years after his departure, the Tompkins County SPCA is struggling with what many other shelters are facing in this economic crisis — a spike in animals. This is coupled with the fact that, for years, the shelter had been dipping into reserves and using donations to help subsidize its animal control contracts with surrounding municipalities. Until the current director, Abigail Smith, came along, no shelter director wanted to address the fact that the shelter's municipal animal-control contracts were not covering costs: In 2002, for example, the average national cost for animal control was $4-$6 per capita. But Tompkins County residents were paying $1.76. That meant the shelter had to subsidize the difference with money in its reserves, and from donations. A 2007 article in the Ithaca Journal quoted Smith as saying, "We've depleted million-dollar reserves over the last ten months.
Because he's not a director, Winograd never has to wrestle with bureaucracy, or shifting economic cycles, or state mandates. He can make suggestions based on extremely limited experience and then simply blame any subsequent failings on poor management. Sweet work if you can get it
Update: Abigail Smith left Tompkins to take the Austin shelter No Kill in 2010 when the funding ran out in New York., Austin is not doing well under this program either. To read the article in full, run a search engine for Barc Sucks by Craig Malisow.
