By now, many Nevadans have heard about the mess over at The Animal Foundation (TAF) in Las Vegas.
The shelter’s CEO, Hilarie Grey, has turned what should be a place of care and compassion into a crisis of cover-ups, contract violations, and excuses.
And the animals? They’re the ones suffering.
Grey, a longtime public relations executive, stepped into the CEO role in 2022.
Sounds good on paper, right? Plenty of government and corporate experience, including time at Allegiant Air and UNLV. She even ran for City Council back in 2019.
But here’s the catch: she has zero background in animal welfare. That’s like putting a wedding planner in charge of a hospital just because she’s good at organizing.
It’s not just a mismatch – it’s malpractice.
In 2022, Las Vegas City Councilwoman Victoria Seaman showed up unannounced at the shelter and what she found was downright disgusting.
Dogs in cages with their own waste. Food and water bowls flipped over. It was bad enough that the City sent TAF a letter demanding they fix things in 48 hours.
Grey dismissed it as a “political stunt.” But dirty cages and neglected animals? That’s not politics. That’s a failure of leadership.
And this wasn’t a one-time slip-up. It was part of a disturbing pattern.
Shortly after Seaman’s visit, a petition popped up on Change.org demanding Grey’s removal.
Over 13,000 people signed it, accusing her of allowing healthy animals to be euthanized and others to suffer in pain from untreated injuries.
One especially heartbreaking case involved a boxer named Molly. She’d been hit by a car, and for 36 hours, she sat in the shelter with a broken leg – despite being microchipped. No one called her owner.
Grey called it a “human error.”
Really? If that’s what passes for accountability, it’s no wonder people are outraged.
Let’s talk about the workers.
In September 2022, eight admissions staffers quit all at once. Why?
They said they were exhausted, underpaid (some made as little as $13 an hour), and ignored when they begged for help.
The shelter had to shut down intakes temporarily. Grey said she was “shattered.”
Then she held a press conference asking folks to foster animals. Notably, she didn’t offer raises or solutions. Fast food joints were paying better than the shelter responsible for saving lives.
Grey’s defenders like to point to “national trends” in overcrowding and say the whole shelter system is in crisis.
That may be true – but that doesn’t excuse what’s been going on at TAF.
We’ve seen photos, we’ve heard from whistleblowers, and we’ve watched funding continue to flow with little to no improvement.
In fact, just this month, Clark County handed Grey’s shelter another $2 million and extended her contract by six months – despite Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick calling TAF a “bad actor.”
The county has already given the shelter $25 million in the past five years. What do we have to show for it? According to former staff and insiders, not much.
James Pumphrey, a former COO of the shelter, wrote a damning report in 2022 before he was fired.
He said the place was running on empty: unpaid bills, injured animals without treatment, not enough staff. But instead of fixing it, he claims Grey pressured him to keep quiet.
That’s not leadership. That’s damage control.
And it gets worse. There’s now a lawsuit from No-Kill Las Vegas claiming the shelter broke the law by not spaying or neutering animals before adoption or transfer. They say Grey used long-term fostering as a loophole to dodge the rules.
Let’s be honest: if this were a private company and not a taxpayer-funded shelter, Hilarie Grey would have been out the door years ago.
But here we are, still footing the bill for mismanagement while Grey takes home a $250,000 salary.
Critics of the criticism say Grey inherited a tough job and has made some improvements.
But let’s be real. When your “improvements” are drowned out by lawsuits, resignations, and reports of animals dying without care, maybe it’s time to admit this PR experiment has failed.
Las Vegas deserves better. The animals deserve better. Taxpayers deserve better.
It’s not enough to hold press conferences and blame politics. Real leadership means taking responsibility. It means listening to staff, cleaning up the mess, and putting animal welfare ahead of press releases.
Until that happens, it’s time for the city, the county, and all of us who care about animals to say what should have been said a long time ago:
Hilarie Grey has got to go.
This article was written with the assistance of AI. Please verify information and consult additional sources as needed.
