Colin McEnroe Show: The New Face Of The Connecticut Humane Society

I felt a little sorry for Gordon Willard, the new director of the Connecticut Humane Society as he sat in a brightly lighted studio with two of the CHS's harshest critics.  Willard is new. His non-profit is beset by problems ranging from an ongoing AG investigation, formidable opposition in the legislature, leaks of their euthanasia records (even though Connecticut falls well below the ugly national rate, no set of euthanasia stats ever looks good), possible NLRB issues, an OSHA fine...well, you get the picture. Willard didn't cause any of it -- he's 13 days into his job -- but he has to fix a lot of it and without stepping on so many toes that he alienates the people whose attitudes he has to reshape.

So he was verrrrrrry careful in his appearance on our show. Probably his biggest job, in the coming year, will be to work with his own board especially in the matter of the peculiarly named "quasi-endowment fund" which ties up most of the society's resources. At the time of the AG's first report, it contained $46 million, which is a lot for a humane society and a lot for an agency that seems to have staffing problems and may be euthanizing animals because they're not able to work with them.  Willard is going to have to make them spend some of that money on actual programs., but that's not the kind of thing he could announce on the radio in his second week on the job. 

The story of the Connecticut Humane Society in 2010 would be more familiar to you had it unfolded in, say 1980 or 1990, when there was a larger reporting corps in Connecticut.

It would have appeared on newspaper front pages on many mornings. Instead, you may know little or nothing at all about it.

Short version: a group of former employees and volunteers began pooling their stories with animals rights activists. Many of their complaints charged Richard Johnston, the 24-year leader of the CHS, with imperious and bullying behavior. Johnston is gone now, and a new director faces the challenge of turning CHS's story around.

If the problem could be boiled down into a sentence, it is: Do the society's financial practices somehow leave it short of staff and less likely to handle the animals properly, particularly in the delicate matter of euthanasia?

We explored that in the show. You can play the audio below.  You can join the conversation. Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.