Last year Los Angeles enacted a strict pet sterilization law that requires most of the city’s pet owners have their dog or cat spayed or neutered. L.A.’s Animal Services had a voucher program that provided free spaying and neutering services to low-income owners- but that program was recently eliminated by the agency’s general manager, Ed Boks. The City Council wasn’t happy with Boks for that decision. Steven Mikulan at LA Daily tells us:

L.A.’s Animal Services general manager Ed Boks left a City Council committee hearing with his tail between his legs yesterday, after being grilled about his unilateral decision to suspend his agency’s spay-neuter voucher program.
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By the end of yesterday’s hearing a contrite Boks admitted he’d gone about fixing his budget shortfall the wrong way, while KNX Radio reported he would begin reinstating the spay-neuter vouchers. It’s expected to be back in place by week’s end, with the City Council apparently ready to overturn Boks’ decision if he doesn’t. Whether this will promote a truce between the council and Boks remains to be seen.

We hear that the LA Times is soliciting opinions for a year-ender on how to improve the cultural life of our city. Unfortunately, they’re calling it

Polishing the Big Orange

The Big Orange? Or the Big O?

If we wanted to live in New York, we would. Can’t our local paper figure out a real urban identity without having to copy someplace else?

And while we’re on the subject, please no opinions from the following:

Roger Mahoney, Jonah Goldberg, Joel Stein, Rosa Brooks, Mike Davis, and Ed Boks.

Carla Hall, who’s got the heartwarming pet beat at the LA Times, gets some inside info on the Ellen DeGeneres pet adoption story (Iggy, the bone of contention is shown above). But she also gets the same old kibbles ‘n bits from Ed Boks:

Ed Boks, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services, which runs six city shelters, said private rescue groups help lower the city’s euthanasia rate.

“Our 125 partners help us place about 6,000 to 7,000 animals a year,” he said. “And that’s compared to the 15,000 we adopt out ourselves.”

FBLA asked animal advocate Daniel Guss about this statement, and he replied:

If this was true, and 21,000–22,000 animals were being adopted a year, the shelters would be EMPTY and few, if any would be getting killed. Since the rescue groups get “redlist” emails each day, showing which animals are about to be killed, someone is lying.

On that note, Villaraigosa recently proclaimed that “LA is #1 in adoptions in the U.S.” But when former shelter commissioner Marie Atake, and KABC-7 challenged that in a recent report, that claim fell to “L.A. is #5″ in the U.S., which is also a dubious claim, since LA Animal Services isn’t even #1 in adoptions in L.A. County.

John and Ken, the KFI radio hosts, are talking today about the Daily News op-ed written by Daniel Guss. Guss gives Ed Boks, the increasingly befuddled manager of Los Angeles Animal Services, a thorough trouncing for fumbling the plans for expanding Tia Torres’ well-regarded pit bull/parolee rescue program.