Supervisors rankle at Butte County Grand Jury's assessment

By ROGER H. AYLWORTH-Staff Writer
Posted: 08/28/2009 12:00:00 AM PDT

OROVILLE — Butte County Supervisor Jane Dolan of Chico wants to make it abundantly clear to the Grand Jury that she is not happy seeing the supervisors characterized as being "surprisingly uninformed and uninvolved" about the county's Department of Behavioral Health.

On June 26, the Butte County Grand Jury issued its annual report with comments, findings and recommendations related to a range of county departments.

Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors had on its consent agenda a list of responses from the departments and the board to statements made in the Grand Jury report.

Consent agenda items are things that aren't considered controversial, and the entire list of items is routinely passed with a single vote. That's the way it goes unless a member of the board, a citizen or member of the staff asks to have the item pulled for public discussion.

That's what happened Tuesday when Dolan asked to have the Grand Jury responses removed from the consent agenda.

She had several "concerns" about the board's official responses, including those about a finding by the Grand Jury on the supervisors' performance when it came to alleged deficiencies in behavioral health.

The Grand Jury report cited that three unidentified supervisors were interviewed.

"The Grand Jury found the Butte County Board of Supervisors to be surprisingly uninformed and uninvolved in overseeing and monitoring the Department of Behavioral Health's fiscal affairs, structure management, and administrative decisions made for the department. When questioned, they were unable to answer most of the Grand Jury's inquiries about the department," the report cites.

Dolan, Bill Connelly of Oroville, and Kim Yamaguchi of Paradise all freely identified themselves as the three supervisors questioned.

Dolan said she "respectfully" disagreed with that finding, and went on to say she was essentially ambushed by the Grand Jury's questions.

She said she was asked to come before the jury for a "meet and greet. That is exactly how the invitation was issued to me."

The meeting began with a "very good interchange," but then it turned to "very specific questions about aspects of the behavioral health's organization, staffing, contracts, budgets, things like that," she explained

Connelly told a similar story.

"When the Grand Jury approached me about the fiscal doings of behavioral health, I tried to point out that we have a budget of well over $400 million — at least at that time we did — and I don't get down into the minutiae and details of individual departments," said Connelly.

Dolan said she was not prepared to respond to such questions, but that is not the same as being "surprisingly uninformed."

"I get reports. I read the reports. I ask questions. I do the very best I can to understand a very complicated department, in which there are multiple levels of funding decisions and multiple levels of regulations, requirements, ever-changing, that this board has no control over.

"Do I know every single thing that happens every single day in the multiple locations of behavioral health? No. Now, if that means I am 'remarkably uninformed,' I would challenge that. I don't think that is accurate," she said.

Yamaguchi said he too was surprised by the allegation, pointing out he is a member of the county's Behavioral Health Advisory Board.

Connelly wanted to make the point that supervisors "as a board," like and support the Grand Jury, but the jury "may have been misled. They came and asked us a series of questions that weren't our job to answer. "

Dolan began going into other aspects of the Grand Jury report, when Sang Kim, deputy county administrative officer, said it was clear to him what the board wanted to say in response to the behavioral health issue. But he told Dolan that in most cases the county has only three options in responding to the report.

The county can agree, disagree, or neither agree nor disagree with the report. In cases when the Grand Jury wants the supervisors to comment on the operation of another elected official's department, he said the response should be the "board neither agrees, nor disagrees, but the board is not involved in the day-to-day operations."

Connelly asked Dolan if she wanted to continue, and she said, "I'm done. Thank you very much."

Kim said the revised response to the jury's report will come back to the supervisors for approval at a later meeting.

http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_13220718