Los Angeles Animal Services is entering another major transition, and this time the headlines are big enough to make people think real change may finally be coming.

Mayor Karen Bass has appointed Gabrielle Amster as the new General Manager of LA Animal Services, pending City Council confirmation. At the same time, LA Animal Services, the ASPCA, and Best Friends Animal Society have announced a multi-year $14 million initiative, and the City has released its FY 2026-27 proposed budget. On paper, that looks like momentum, but Los Angeles has a long history of asking the shelter system to survive on optimism, partnerships, and damage control rather than on durable public investment.

LA Animal Services is one of the largest municipal shelter systems in the country, serving approximately 50,000 animals each year and responding to more than 20,000 emergency calls involving animals and people in danger.

New GM: Who is Gabrielle Amster?

On paper, Gabrielle Amster brings a strong animal-welfare resume to a department that urgently needs experienced leadership.

Mayor Bass’ office says Amster brings more than 19 years of experience in nonprofit and municipal animal welfare and credits her with advancing innovation, collaboration, staff development, and life-saving outcomes. The Mayor’s announcement highlights her tenure at Wallis Annenberg PetSpace, where she reportedly increased adoptions, improved staff retention, expanded access to spay/neuter and veterinary services, and strengthened ties to the Los Angeles community.

Public biographical material from CalAnimals adds depth. Before leading PetSpace, Amster served as executive director of the Palm Springs Animal Shelter and held leadership roles at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter, Woods Humane Society, and Animal Trustees in Austin. CalAnimals also credits her with creating more inclusive adoption processes, reducing the length of stay through canine and feline enrichment, expanding adoption awareness, and supporting pet owners with practical solutions. It further notes that during her first year at PetSpace, adoption and transfer intake increased by nearly 50 percent.

Her background suggests she understands more than placement numbers. It suggests she understands operations, enrichment, community-facing services, access to care, and the reality that shelters do not improve simply because someone declares a new era. They improve when work is done inside the buildings, and systems outside the buildings are improved simultaneously.

That said, one person is not a miracle worker. A capable general manager can help stabilize culture, expectations, and accountability. A capable general manager cannot single-handedly erase chronic underfunding, staffing shortages, medical bottlenecks, overcrowding, or years of political failure. Los Angeles should absolutely give Amster the chance to lead, but the City should not set her up to absorb systemic failures that require budgetary and policy solutions.

 

 

New partnership: what is the $14M ASPCA-Best Friends deal?

The new partnership is real, significant, and worth paying attention to. It is also important not to oversimplify it.

On April 20, LA Animal Services announced that, in collaboration with LAAS, the ASPCA, and Best Friends Animal Society, it is launching a joint, multi-year $14 million funding and operational support initiative. LAAS describes it as the largest combined investment by those two national organizations in a single municipal shelter system.

The initiative is built around three stated priorities: preventing unnecessary shelter intake through community engagement, improving in-shelter care and operational efficiency, and increasing positive outcomes, including adoptions, foster care, and reunification with owners.

LAAS says the ASPCA and Best Friends are committed to an initial three-year period and that LAAS will maintain key positions and programmatic advancements for an additional three years after the grant period.

According to the official LAAS release, LAAS will receive funding from the ASPCA and Best Friends to support more than 20 critical staffing roles, including expanded adoption and foster teams and dedicated specialists for community cat programs. In addition, the ASPCA and Best Friends will place four experienced staff members inside LAAS facilities to provide hands-on support in training, program development, implementation, and animal health and safety. The initiative also includes enhanced intake strategies, stronger foster capacity, return-to-owner work, field-based reunifications, training, data management, volunteer engagement, and community outreach.

That is substantial help, but we hope the City of Los Angeles can permanently fund the shelter system in the future. The public description focuses on staffing, systems, training, community engagement, and operations. It does not describe a direct one-for-one backfill for shelter medicine, animal food, or medical-supply line items in the City budget. The partnership may help indirectly by improving throughput and support, but it should not be treated as an excuse for the City to underfund core care.

That is one of the most pressing points this moment demands: philanthropy can help build a bridge, but it should not become the operating model for a municipal shelter system.

 

 

New budget: what is actually in it?

This is where the conversation has to become much more precise.

The official FY 2026-27 proposed budget lists LA Animal Services at $28,963,055, composed of $27,814,477 in salaries and $1,148,578 in expenses. Compared with the FY 2025-26 adopted budget of $28,497,415, that is an increase of $465,640, or about 1.6%.

The same official budget documents show that LAAS was funded at $30,307,409 in FY 2024-25 and $31,699,537 in FY 2023-24. While the new proposal is slightly above last year, it remains about $1.34 million below FY 2024-25 and about $2.74 million below FY 2023-24. This is not a restoration budget. It is a modest bump after multiple years of erosion.

The supporting budget document also explicitly lists a $1.00 million “Animal Services – Position and Expense Reductions” efficiency/reduction item in the FY 2026-27 proposed budget. In other words, even with selected additions elsewhere in the recapitulation, LAAS is still being asked to absorb a real reduction. The budget documents I reviewed do not provide a plain-English explanation, such as “medical was cut because of X,” so the safest reading is that LAAS is once again being forced to absorb budget pressure in the kinds of flexible operating lines that are easiest to squeeze and hardest for animals to survive without. That last point is an inference from the structure of the budget, not a City explanation.

And this matters even more because we just watched LAAS go through a brutal budget cycle last year. In the 2025-26 proposed budget overview, the Chief Legislative Analyst said Animal Services was proposed for a $4.8 million reduction to $25.5 million, including the deletion of 62 filled positions and 60 vacant positions, but later modifications partially restored the cuts. That tells us something important: LAAS has already been a target in austerity budgeting, and that pattern is not theoretical.

 

 

What did LAAS actually gain in the FY 2026-27 proposal?

The Animal Services recap shows a mix of compensation adjustments, some continued services, some increased services, and several cuts. The visible LAAS-specific additions or continuations include:

Accounting Section Support: $62,881

Administrative Citation Enforcement Program Expense: $8,500

Animal Care Staffing Support: $542,548

District Supervisor: $114,604

Veterinary Medical Support: $207,994

Volunteer Program Support: $135,637

As-Needed Support: $40,242

Permits Section Support: $92,387

Public Records Request Support: $62,881

Restoration of One-Time Reductions: $300,000

These elements are not insignificant; many are crucial. Animal care staffing, veterinary support, volunteer assistance, and administrative and public-records support all matter, especially in an agency that requires operational efficiency and public accountability. However, they are included within a budget that remains too small to match the scale of the workload.

 

 

What is being cut, reduced, or left exposed?

The same Animal Services recapitulation shows the following LAAS reductions or offsets in the proposed budget:

Deletion of Funding for Resolution Authorities: ($1,049,809)

Deletion of One-Time Expense Funding: ($805,960)

Expense Account Reduction: ($839,623)

Field Operations Efficiency Improvement: ($82,616)

Shelter Operations Efficiency Improvement: ($80,812)

So yes, there are additions. But there are also real subtractions. That is why the budget feels so contradictory. It is doing two things at once: preserving or adding selected support lines while still squeezing the department overall.

Medical supply funding is cut, and this problem is not new. It is chronic.

This is the part that should alarm anyone who cares about actual animal welfare, not just public messaging.

A 2026 Budget Advocates addendum, which claims to have compiled its figures from the City’s White Books and LAAS’s requested budget, states that the medical supplies budget remained at $488,591 for years, dropped to $388,591 in FY 2022-23, was restored in FY 2023-24, then fell again to $388,591 in FY 2024-25 and stayed there in FY 2025-26. The same addendum says LAAS requested $488,591 for FY 2026-27, essentially a return to the old nominal level. It also notes that if the line had kept pace with inflation since FY 2014-15, it would need to be just over $670,000.

That same addendum states that those reductions forced LAAS to use more than $744,000 in Animal Welfare Trust Fund donations since FY 2019-20, just to meet animals’ medical-supply needs. That is not what donations should be used for. Donations should help expand care, not quietly plug a long-term municipal shortfall in basic shelter medicine.

The food numbers tell a similar story. The Budget Advocates report says LAAS’s food budget has been underfunded since FY 2020-21, forcing the department to use nearly $871,000 in donations to feed animals in City care. It says the City allocated only $200,000 for food in FY 2025-26, which did not even cover five months, and that the department had already used nearly $85,000 in donations for food by November 2025. The requested amount for FY 2026-27 was $400,000.

That is why the medical issue should not be framed as a one-year mystery. The deeper pattern is chronic underfunding of core care.

 

 

Is the new partnership covering the medical cuts?

Not on paper, no.

The official LAAS release describes the ASPCA and Best Friends initiative as grant funding for staffing roles and embedded operational support, with a focus on intake prevention, shelter operations, adoptions, fostering, reunification, community cat work, training, data management, and animal health and safety support. It does not describe a direct replacement for the City’s medical supplies or food accounts.

That distinction matters because people will hear “$14 million” and assume LAAS’s medical problems have just been solved. That is not what the public release says. The partnership may help relieve operational pressure. It may improve animal outcomes. It may strengthen care systems. But it is not a clean substitute for the City fully funding shelter medicine, food, enrichment, and staffing.

 

 

Dogs Playing for Life is At-Risk

The budget story is not just about medicine. It is also about enrichment and behavioral welfare.

In the 2024-25 year-end Financial Status Report, the CAO recommended transferring $213,562 to address projected overspending associated with the Dogs Playing for Life contract. Then, in the FY 2025-26 expenditures report, the CAO said the adopted budget had provided only $709,125 to fund the contract for six months, and that LAAS received an $800,000 ASPCA grant to cover the remaining six months. The department estimated $1,767,000 in DPFL contract expenditures in the current fiscal year.

According to the department’s FY 2026-27 proposed budget memo filed with the City Clerk, the Proposed Budget includes no funding to continue LAAS’s canine-enrichment agreement with Dogs Playing for Life.

What enrichment or playgroup systems will replace DPFL?

 

 

What else is still underfunded?

Prevention remains a major concern.

The Budget Advocates report recommends approving the full $31,869,100 LAAS operational request with no cuts, plus additional funding for spay/neuter and the Citywide Cat Program. It specifically recommends adding $4 million above the requested amount for the Animal Sterilization Fund and $1 million above the requested amount for the Citywide Cat Program.

These asks are not arbitrary. LAAS’s Citywide Cat Program states that it provides resources for community cat sterilization, includes annual funding for at least 20,000 community cat sterilizations, and is separate from funds designated for owned pets. In other words, the prevention side of the system already exists. It just needs to be protected and expanded if the City is serious about reducing intake pressure rather than merely reacting to it after the fact.

Public budget comments filed with the City also report that the total requested FY 2026-27 Animal Services budget, including the non-departmental spay/neuter request, was $39,785,296, with $7,916,196 requested for spay/neuter programs. Those same comments argue that even the requested spay/neuter amount was lower than the prior year’s request and still insufficient.

 

 

So what should people take from all of this?

Three things can be true at once.

A new general manager can be a good sign.

A major national partnership can be a good sign.

And the City can still be underfunding the core of humane sheltering.

Gabrielle Amster may very well be a strong appointment. The ASPCA and Best Friends initiative may genuinely help LAAS improve operations and outcomes. But the City’s own budget still leaves LAAS below prior-year funding levels, explicitly includes a $1 million position-and-expense reduction, and continues to expose the department’s most basic life-and-welfare lines, including medicine, food, and enrichment.

 

 

Call to action: fight for medical funding, because this is what actually keeps animals alive

If people want to know what to fight for, the answer is not vague.

Fight for the full restoration and protection of shelter medicine.

Fight for food funding that does not rely on donations to cover basic meals.

Fight for enrichment that keeps dogs behaviorally viable.

Fight for the full LAAS operational request, not another round of quiet trimming.

Fight for spay/neuter and community cat funding, because prevention is how you reduce suffering before it enters the kennel.

This is the plain truth: medicine is not a luxury line item. Food is not a luxury line item. Enrichment is not a luxury line item. These are the things that determine whether animals deteriorate, get sick, shut down, become harder to place, or die in a system that was supposed to protect them.

Los Angeles does not need another round of celebrating a reset while leaving the animals to absorb the consequences. It needs leadership, yes. It needs partnership, yes. But more than anything, it needs the City itself to fund the unglamorous core of humane sheltering as if it matters.

 

 

 

 

Source list

• Mayor Karen Bass announcement appointing Gabrielle Amster as new General Manager of LA Animal Services.
• LA Animal Services press release on the ASPCA and Best Friends $14 million initiative.
• FY 2026-27 Proposed Budget summary and comparative tables for Animal Services.
• FY 2026-27 Supporting Information showing the $1.00 million Animal Services “Position and Expense Reductions” line.
• FY 2024-25 year-end FSR showing the transfer for Dogs Playing for Life.
• FY 2025-26 expenditure report showing DPFL six-month funding and ASPCA grant support.
• LA Animal Services Citywide Cat Program page.
• CalAnimals biography for Gabrielle Amster.
• Los Angeles Times reporting on Amster’s appointment and the conditions she is stepping into.
• Chief Legislative Analyst overview of the 2025-26 proposed budget showing the prior $4.8 million proposed cut and deletion of 62 filled positions.
• Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates report and addendum on LAAS operational, food, medical, DPFL, spay/neuter, and Citywide Cat funding.
• City Clerk-filed FY 2026-27 department budget materials indicating the proposed budget does not fund continuation of Dogs Playing for Life and highlighting medical and food concerns.