Grand jury report disputed by Orosi Public Utility District board members

Officials' replacement decision may violate spirit of open-meeting law

BY VALERIE GIBBONS • vgibbons@visalia.gannett.com • July 7, 2009

Board members for the Orosi Public Utilities District are rebutting what they call an unfair grand jury report accusing them of violating the spirit of open-meetings laws.

An attorney for the district blasted the jury's findings in a response to its final report, which was made public June 27. The grand jury took issue with the appointment of Leonard Hutchinson to the utility district board after board member Manuel Cerda resigned suddenly on Jan. 8, 2008.

Cerda announced his resignation, stepped down and immediately took a seat in the audience, according to the meeting's minutes. The board's counsel, Colleen Carlson, advised the panel that it had two choices: appoint a member or have a representative chosen in a special election.

The board voted at that same meeting to appoint Cerda's replacement. Three members of the 2007 grand jury were in the audience at the Jan. 8 meeting.

Board members advertised the vacancy for a month and accepted applications at their next meeting a month later. On Feb. 12, the board appointed Leonard Hutchinson who had lost a 2007 election to Cerda by 10 votes to fill the vacant position.

"While the letter of the law concerning the addition of an item to the Jan. 8 meeting agenda may have been observed, the spirit of the law which demands openness was not," the grand jury wrote in its final report. "Nothing would have been lost by dealing with the replacement appointment at a later meeting. Board members need to operate with transparency and cooperation among themselves and with the district."

But Carlson, the district's legal counsel, disagrees. She said she was surprised by the grand jury's recommendation after all of the interviews and material she had provided it.

"I don't know how they came to that conclusion," she said. "They had all of the documentation. Somehow they didn't connect all of the dots."
Emergency or no?

California's open-meetings law requires a majority of the board to determine that an emergency situation exists before a board can act on an item not on the agenda. Absent an emergency, the law requires agendas to be posted at least 72 hours before a regular meeting of the legislative body of a local agency.

Carlson said the board had to make a decision at the January 2008 meeting because local elections officials had to be notified whether the seat would be filled by an appointee or by a special election.

"It was urgent that they chose which process they would use," she said.

The attorney said she has filed an official response and is waiting on word from the county counsel's office as to where the responses will be posted publicly. All responses from the other agencies investigated by this year's grand jury are required within 60 days.

http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20090707/NEWS01/907070319/1002/Grand-jury-report-disputed-by-Orosi-Public-Utility-District-board-members