Montgomery County audit finds animal services training never written down, no smoking gun but no formal requirements either

An audit of Montgomery County's Office of Animal Services found a clean ledger on donations — and, on training, nothing to read. Between June and September, Inspector General Megan Limarzi's office reviewed the county's Animal Services and Adoption Center and recommended that the agency formalize its employee training policies in writing, because training requirements vary by position and several divisions had none on paper at all.

The office is not a minor one. It handled as many as 7,000 animals in fiscal 2025, and Executive Director Caroline Hairfield describes its work plainly: "We're where the living evidence goes in animal crimes, right? And we also deal with a lot of public health diseases that have a lot of implications for public health." Some positions carry outside verification — veterinarians and veterinary technicians hold state licenses. Others do not. The audit, which focused on nonsupervisory staff and excluded animal control officers, found divisions that kept no consistent training records, or incomplete ones. The training itself is real: staff receive fear-free handling instruction designed to reduce stress in animals, particularly those that may have experienced abuse or neglect. What was missing was the paper trail.

"There was no smoking gun here; this was actually a pretty good audit," Hairfield said. Auditors did find that staff "appear to follow the written procedures for receiving monetary donations," consistent with county policy. In-kind donations are another matter: under current rules, donated items valued at less than $10,000 are not tracked at all, and the inspector general wants that threshold lowered.

County Chief Administrative Officer Richard Madaleno agreed with the findings and said some recommendations, including standardized documentation requirements, could be completed by the end of the year. Full implementation is targeted for June 30, 2027. Hairfield said the agency had already been working to formalize its training policies — "It's a lot to write, to get down in writing the way that we want to do it" — and that the inspector general "really just confirmed what we already knew."

An agency whose animals serve as living evidence in criminal cases has spent years without written training standards in several of its divisions. It now has until June 30, 2027, to finish writing down what its employees already know how to do.