ST. FRANCIS, HELP L.A. HELP ANIMALS.

Byline: DANIEL GUSS  Local View

MAYOR Antonio Villaraigosa, like a young St. Francis of Assisi, had a misspent youth as a street tough. The similarities between the two end there.

St. Francis is the patron saint of animals, and Villaraigosa has had one humane disaster after another in his short tenure at City Hall.

The most recent -- and preventable -- tragedy is the death of Gita, a life long resident of the Los Angeles Zoo who died some 30-plus years prematurely, had she been given living quarters that are as natural and spacious as nature intended Gita to have.

But Gita's death is no accident.

Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles City Council were warned about the unacceptable conditions at the zoo. For years, activists and experts in the field cautioned that even if the elephant quarters at the zoo were expanded, moving Gita and the other elephants to a sanctuary would be best for them.

But Villaraigosa and the City Council, despite all of the documented risks, didn't do what was best for Gita and the other pachyderms. Instead, they did as politicians often do: Throw money at the situation, and allow the suffering to continue.

Rather than freeing the elephants and doing the humane thing, they make their pompous speeches and agree to spend millions expanding the elephant habitat at the zoo, a process that would take years -- including years of prolonged suffering by the elephants -- and result in animals' lives that would not be as good, or as long, as they could be.

This is the same type of battle that Villaraigosa and the City Council had last year in ridding the Los Angeles of Guerdon Stuckey, the awful general manager of L.A.'s animal shelters. Stuckey was hired to run the shelters -- without a single day of experience running a shelter, or even an animal charity -- and when he failed miserably, they gave him a bundle of cash to disappear.

Did Villaraigosa and City Council bring in a well-respected, experienced and well-qualified Angeleno to run the shelters? No. Did they hire Nathan Winograd, a nationally known expert on no-kill shelters and Stanford Law graduate, to bring solutions to Los Angeles? No. They brought in Ed Boks, a controversial shelter director from New York, who denies he was fired from his previous job, despite bold headlines in the New York Daily News that state otherwise.

Then, like now with Gita, L.A.'s elected officials saw common sense and ran from it like cheetahs.

So this atheist is turning to St. Francis for help for the animals of Los Angeles. Help is needed to help stop L.A.'s politicos from deafly disregarding, instead of deftly listening to, those in the humane world, and then putting the funds toward the right solutions.

The death of Gita, and the ongoing humane problems at L.A.'s zoo and with Boks at the animal shelters, are examples of City Hall's mindless disregard for animals and common sense.

We are tired of Villaraigosa's and the City Council's high-horse speeches and posturing for ribbon-cutting and kitten-cuddling photo-ops. Listen, learn and do the right thing. Because it's just a matter of time before it happens again.