State investigators have released a report charging that for years, officials at the Hudson County SPCA neglected the animals within their care – and sold their food for personal profit.
The State Commission of Investigation, a Trenton-based body that probes corruption cases involving governing bodies and agencies throughout New Jersey, released a 173-page report Wednesday on abuses at county animal shelters across the state. The introduction to the report specifically cites the Hudson County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) headquartered in Jersey City, which contracts with Hoboken, West New York, Secaucus, Jersey City, Weehawken and Bayonne to care for stray animals.
“While [Hudson County SPCA] officials skimmed patron fees and sold dog food for personal profit,” states page two of the report, “animals languished in overcrowded, poorly ventilated enclosures without adequate food, water or veterinary care.”
However, attorneys for officials at the Hudson County SPCA said last week that their clients were concerned volunteers who did the best they could running a nonprofit organization. They said that, at worst, their clients were guilty of being inexperienced. SPCA officials said they did not know of any criminal wrongdoing.
The SCI’s findings have been turned over to the state Attorney General, the federal Internal Revenue Service, the state Division of Taxation, and other law enforcement agencies. The SCI performs investigations but does not prosecute crimes.
Emily Hornaday of the state’s Criminal Justice Division, the prosecuting arm of the Attorney General’s office, said Wednesday that her office will review the report. She stressed that the allegations were only allegations, and declined to speculate as to whether criminal charges, indictments and arrests might result.
Charges
County animal shelters throughout New Jersey received charters from the state years ago, and now act as independent agencies to investigate animal cruelty, to shelter stray animals and to adopt them out. However, according to the SCI report, many SPCAs, especially those in Hudson County and Camden County, are not following their mission.
The Hudson County SPCA, chartered 106 years ago and incorporated 11 years ago, is run by an unpaid board of directors and a few paid full-time workers. It uses few volunteers and cares for up to 155 dogs and cats at one time. Until a new director, Tom Hart, took over this past summer, the volunteer director was retiree Frank Pulver, whose brother, Edward, was the head of the board. Edward is also the head of a county employees’ union.
Even before Wednesday’s report was released, the SPCA had come under fire. It was cited by the state Health Department last year for unsanitary conditions. Additionally, after witnesses saw a shelter employee hitting a dog with a shovel last summer, that employee was fired.
Since then, Secaucus, Jersey City and Bayonne have all moved to either build new shelters of their own or work with animal activist groups to do so. Secaucus maintains its own small animal shelter and is nearly finished constructing a much larger facility.
The SCI investigation began in 1998 following a complaint about the Bergen County SPCA. The probe was extended to all state SPCAs, some of which run shelters and some of which investigate animal cruelty. (The Hudson County SPCA runs the county shelter but does not investigate cruelty complaints.) SCI investigators looked at the agencies’ financial and other operations going back to 1993.
The report makes the following allegations about the Hudson County SPCA, located on Johnston Avenue in Jersey City:
• Sale of dog food: “On a routine basis for at least the past five years, the shelter’s manager, Frank Pulver, has been siphoning off 40-pound bags of dog food, selling them to an individual who had guard dogs policing his junkyard, and pocketing the money.” The report says that based upon surveillance and interviews, the SCI believes that after the SPCA got a delivery of dog food, Pulver or a shelter employee would drive six bags to a man who owned a junkyard, and collect $66 cash. Frank Pulver’s attorney, Jean Barrett of Montclair, said Thursday that the SCI has no evidence of Pulver’s alleged crime and that the agency seems to be relying on one unnamed informant. A shelter board member said that the SPCA was allowed to sell dog food to raise funds.
• Money possibly ‘skimmed’: Money is missing or improperly accounted for, and the report suggests that it may have been “skimmed” by someone in charge. According to the report, the SPCA reported 329 pets picked up for adoption or euthanasia for a fee in 1999, but financial records indicate less than the amount the shelter should have taken in. The investigators believed that shelter director Frank Pulver picked up many of the animals, but did not report the correct amount of the fees in the appropriate place. The report alleges that “as much as $14,000 may have been skimmed from surrender fees in 1999.” However, the report does not say why the SCI believes the case is one of pocketing money rather than faulty bookkeeping.
• Funds for unrelated causes: The shelter allegedly gave money to causes unrelated to animal welfare, including $6,575 from 1993 through 1999 for tickets to a dinner sponsored by a foundation run by Ed Pulver in honor of a friend who died of cancer, and $6,900 to erect a Philippine-American veterans’ war memorial in Jersey City. According to the report, Ed Pulver’s name is listed on a plaque reading, “The Philippine Plaza Foundation, Inc. Extends Its Gratitude To: Labor Leader Edward Pulver, Hudson County Central Labor Council.” However, Pulver’s lawyer, Lloyd Epstein of Manhattan, in a letter included as an appendix to the SCI report, refuted that the SPCA paid for the plaque.
• Inadequate veterinary services: The shelter paid a specific veterinarian to be on call for the shelter as necessary, but he rarely was contacted by the shelter, rarely visited, and was frequently out of the country and left no one in his place should an emergency occur.
• Poor tax reporting: The shelter paid money for employees’ medical expenses but did not include that amount as benefits on the employees’ W-2 forms for the IRS.
• No screening of employees: Shelter employees were never screened before they were hired. On June 15, 2000, a shelter employee was caught by witnesses hitting a dog with a shovel (as reported in this and other newspapers). The police department told the SCI that the individual was homeless and had convictions for drug possession and bail jumping.
• Poor recordkeeping: Animal adoption forms were not always filled out.
• Unsavory conditions: An owner of a company providing animal disposal services to the shelter testified to the Commission that he was “appalled” at “dead dogs and cats piled in a heap in a room” when he first visited the shelter in 1995. “Remarkably,” according to the report, “a few animals [in the room] were still alive.” The report cites other poor conditions in the shelter.
•: Rubber stamp: “The Board of Trustees has been an ineffectual and disinterested body. Edward Pulver admitted in an interview that it was nothing more than a rubber stamp for his actions.”
• Attempts to hide records: When subpoenaed by SCI, according to the report, “Edward Pulver …secreted many of the records on the premises of the shelter. In fact, the Commission received information that he issued directives to destroy these records.” The report then notes that after the SCI executed a search warrant in December of 1999, they found some records that they had requested in the shelter and some in an adjacent warehouse. Some of the records were in a plastic bag. The report states, perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek, “Edward Pulver boasted to the Commission that he and his manager brother never received any salary in their tireless work for the shelter. However, they were compensated other ways.”
Responses
Frank Pulver’s attorney, Jean Barrett of Montclair, said last week that the SCI is making accusations without evidence. She said that Pulver is a 78-year-old retired warehouseman who was a volunteer at the SPCA and did the best he could.
The shelter’s current director, Tom Hart, sent a 46-page response to the SCI that is included in the appendix to the report. Hart said that when he took over the shelter, he found a group of caring people who were dealing with an operation that is, because of its nature, difficult. He also said that volunteers like Frank and Ed Pulver were inexperienced at running a non-profit organization, but were doing the best they could.
“While having the lack of the sophistication and training of the professional nonprofit director, [Ed] Pulver did a remarkable job,” wrote Hart, an animal lover and a former Jersey City councilman. “My findings indicate that Mr. Pulver is, in fact, a deeply caring man whose primary, if not sole, motivation was, in fact, those animals and providing them at least some humane and dignified treatment despite overwhelming odds.”
Hart said that taking out ads in journals for testimonial dinners and buying tickets to charitable functions is good for nonprofit agencies. “In the corporate world, it is highly recommended and called ‘networking,'” he wrote. He said that Ed Pulver gave fruit baskets at Christmas to women on the board to kindly acknowledge the efforts of volunteers and employees.
Hart also said that the director of an agency like the shelter needs some freedom to make emergency decisions.
“Several nights ago at midnight,” Hart wrote, “I received an emergency call that all of my dogs were ill with a stomach problem which required that we go out – at midnight – and get 100 pounds of cooked rice. Forget how difficult that was; my point is that I had neither time nor privilege to call a board meeting or seek a voucher or requisition form for that purchase. The need of the animals demanded that I take $200 from my own pocket.”
Hart also noted that the SCI itself has been criticized in the past for releasing reports to the public that include damning language that can damage a person’s reputation without allowing that person to present his or her side of the story.
Edward Pulver’s attorney, Lloyd Epstein of Manhattan, agreed. “People like Eddie Pulver had to put in blood sweat and tears to put keep the shelter together,” he said Thursday. “I think if you look really closely at what’s going on here, you’ll see there’s a lot of fluff. I don’t know what the SCI’s agenda is. I think the worst you can say about someone like Eddie was that he was a volunteer and he was an amateur.”
Jack Shaw, a member of the SPCA board who acts as a spokesperson for the shelter, said Wednesday afternoon that he hadn’t yet seen the report, but that the SPCA had retained an attorney as soon as they found out that the SCI was investigating.
Attorney Thomas Giblin of Union Township, who is handling the case on behalf of the SPCA, did not return phone calls by press time.
Shaw said that since he joined the board in late 1997, he had not been aware of any wrongdoing at the shelter. He said that Hartz-Mountain had donated dog food to the shelter, and that the company had said the shelter could sell the excess food for funds.
Shaw also said that it would have been too difficult to perform background checks on shelter employees. “They’re very hard to do on $7-per-hour employees,” he said. “It’s hard to keep employees there. It’s noisy. It smells. An animal, when it goes to bathroom, doesn’t care where he goes to the bathroom. As for adopting, we require what state law asks for, a drivers’ license.”
Shaw said he believed that Pulver and the other officials did the best they could with the resources they had.
“Was it an ideal operation?” Shaw said. “No. But it was best we could do with what had to do it with and the mission we had. We’re not the North Shore Animal League. We’re a place you can take stray animals, and find a place to adopt them.”
Shaw said that the SPCA has paid more than $300,000 to attorneys to deal with the SCI case, “money which I’d have rather seen going to the caring of and welfare of animals.”
The SCI has recommended in its report that SPCAs, especially those carrying out law enforcement duties, should be disbanded and their tasks given to the governing body of a county or municipality. The SCI, founded in 1979, is an autonomous non-partisan commission that relies on a team of paid attorneys, accountants, and analysts to conduct investigations related to public safety matters.