The Search for the New GM Goes On

As you know, I have a few media contacts to whom I feed information to and vice versa. Some of them have used info I gave them as the basis for stories about LAAS, but a lot of the time, the stories are killed, like the Daily News story about Jimmy. After Dana interviewed Jimmy, and a DN photographer spent three whole days with Jimmy and me, the story was killed.


Here is what I have been able to piece together about the GM hiring process for Animal Services.


The search is for real. Kathy Davis may be a candidate--I don't know--but there will be other candidates and hopefully some qualified. I, and many others were sent a questionair about what we thought were important qualities we thought the GM should have.


The Mayor is looking to hire six department head positions, with the police chief being number seven. The City has hired a head hunting firm to do a search, which was initiated in August or September after Villaraigosa gave the green light.


The headhunter will be proactive in reaching out to known experts in the field, and I assume that means Winograd and his protogees, such as Bonnie Brown and Susan Kogut, as well as Nathan's enemies, such as Carl Friedman, ex head of San Francisco's Animal Care and Control, as well as the other "usual suspects" like Francis Batista and maybe Ed Sayres and Pacelle, two non-friends of Nathan.


They will be contacted as the job description is being formulated as well as to seek out candidate referrals.  They will also accept unsolicited referrals or expressions of interest.  The headhunters will interview and thoroughly screen any they consider serious candidates to narrow the field down to a manageable number.  That is if they can get actual good candidates, which is by no means a given considering the reputation LA has.


I also understand that the Mayor has put an emphasis on the search for a new GM, and is involving a lot more people than usual in the formulation and search process.


The new police chief will probably be announced Monday by the way.