Yesterday I e-mailed the Director of the Animal Services Division of the Montgomery County Police Department to explain that my requests for outcomes data from the Montgomery County Humane Society weren’t being answered, and to ask where I should direct my FOIA request. I cc’d the Executive Director of MCHS on the message.
That was all it took. She sent the data today, and we’ll add it to ShelterWatch soon.
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A few weeks ago we started e-mailing the directors of open-admission shelters in affluent counties and asking them to help us obtain their 2009 intake and dispositions summaries for cats and dogs. We want to include results from as many of these shelters as we can in the database on our affiliated website ShelterWatch.
Most shelter directors have responded positively and promptly, and either e-mailed us a copy of their outcomes table or provided instructions on how and where we should file a written request. So far only one shelter director has chosen not to respond, despite a follow-up e-mail request and a subsequent open-letter request on this blog.
The non-respondent is Cris Bombaugh, President and CEO of the Montgomery County Humane Society.
I don’t expect Ms. Bombaugh to be the last shelter director we contact who will decline to make her shelter’s outcomes data transparent, despite the fact that her organization manages the shelter under contract with Montgomery County and receives taxpayer funds. But since she’s the first (and so far the only) director to ignore our request, she’s now the first name on ShelterHawk’s soon-to-be-famous Ostrich List.
All she needs to do to remove her entry from our Ostrich List is e-mail the outcomes data, or instructions on how to get it, to:
s h e l t e r h a w k (at) y a h o o (dot) c o m
Stay tuned for further head-burrowing “action”.
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On April 29, I sent the following e-mail to Cris Bombaugh, the President and CEO of the Montgomery County Humane Society:
Dear Ms. Bombaugh,
I am constructing an online animal outcomes database and would like to include results from MCHS. My goal is to provide a resource that makes it easy to review and compare outcomes data for open-admission shelters in the Washington, DC area.
I found an aggregate adoptions number for 2008 on the MCHS website, but would appreciate it if you could either e-mail me or point me to an online summary of your 2009 animal outcomes data, either in the standard Asilomar Accords format or the closest approximation you have to that format.
I don’t need the healthy/manageable/rehabilitable/unhealthy category breakdowns that the Asilomar format provides, but I do need the subtotals, including beginning count, intake from public, intake from partners, returned to owner, adopted, transferred, died or lost, euthanized, owner-requested euthanasia, and end count.
Thanks very much for your help.
She didn’t reply, so I sent the message again on May 7. She hasn’t replied to that request either.
When I sent similar messages to the directors of the Alexandria and Fairfax shelters, I received the data I’d asked for within a day. The director of the Howard County shelter replied by instructing me to request the data in writing from the Police Records Section, so I did that yesterday.
Here’s an excerpt from the “About Us” page on the MCHS website:
The Montgomery County Humane Society is not a government agency. We are private, non-profit 501 (c)(3) animal welfare organization that is funded by individual donors, businesses, and grants. However, since 1958, through a contract with Montgomery County, we have worked together to operate the animal shelter and provide an array of lifesaving services. The county provides funding for all the necessary requirements needed to provide for the animals. This includes items such as food, shelter, 24-hour emergency services, etc. The MCHS provides funds for those programs that are beyond the basic care. This includes such programs as our private rescue shelter, foster home care, humane education, the mobile adoption unit, volunteer training, and many others.
This structure might sound familiar to AWLA Hawk readers. When an Arlington-based animal-welfare advocate asked AWLA for their animal outcomes data two years ago, the organization refused to provide it. The advocate sued and won, and the judge ordered AWLA to provide the information. Does MCHS want to follow this path?
Here’s the work-in-process website that will compare animal outcomes data for DC-area shelters. Why wouldn’t MCHS want to be included in these listings?
Third request: Ms. Bombaugh, could you please provide us with the 2009 animal outcomes data for MCHS?
s h e l t e r h a w k (at) y a h o o (dot) c o m
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If you’ve visited http://awlahawk.org, this site will look familiar. ShelterHawk will take a broader look at animal shelters in the DC area, where different municipalities manage their animal shelters in different ways.
Like Arlington County, Montgomery County and the City of Alexandria contract with a private non-profit organization (the Montgomery County Humane Society and the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria respectively) to perform animal control and manage a privately-owned shelter facility.
In Prince Georges, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties, animal control and the animal shelter are managed by a division of the municipal government.
In Howard County a municipally-managed shelter is closely allied with a private non-profit that promotes the shelter’s animals for adoption and undertakes programs on their behalf.
And in Fauquier County and the City of Richmond, a private SPCA shares a facility with municipal animal control, accepts as many animals from animal control as it can handle, and manages the shelter for those animals.
But whether the shelter is managed by the local government or by a non-profit organization, the outlook for its homeless animals usually reflects the degree to which its management team has been willing to implement programs that have been proven successful — like adoption events, spay/neuter assistance programs, fostering, and coordination with rescue groups.
ShelterHawk will examine the extent to which DC-area shelters are pursuing these programs on behalf of their homeless animals, and assess the relative effectiveness of those efforts.
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