Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman is sounding tough in her new radio ad, calling out the cases of waste, fraud and abuse in California. She's proposing a "statewide grand jury of civic-minded Californians" that has the power to investigate and indict to get rid of these problems in the state.
"The message will be very clear -- if you're caught robbing the taxpayers, you'll go to jail," Whitman says in the ad.
There are only a handful of states (like Florida) that have statewide grand juries as most of the time grand juries are used at the county level. And critics of Whitman's plan says that's where they should stay.
"You are creating something that's redundant," said Peter Keane, an emeritus dean at Golden Gate University School of Law.
But the Whitman campaign said that a statewide grand jury would actually be more efficient because it would minimize the number of California counties that had to look at cases of waste, fraud and abuse happening at the state level.
Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the campaign of Whitman's opponent, Democratic state Attorney General Jerry Brown, came back with this statement:
"Only Meg Whitman could pitch creating a government agency to reduce government waste. Its a simplistic idea custom-made for a radio ad, but the reality is that Gov. Schwarzenegger tried this already and had to admit the waste wasn't there."
Darrel Ng, a Whitman spokesman, said that the statewide grand jury would use existing state resources to save costs, including pulling staff from other offices. And he said that the potential cost savings of the jury "would far outweigh any minor additional costs that might be incurred."
Our dandy state Constitution neither precludes nor authorizes a statewide grand jury, saying only: "One or more grand juries shall be drawn and summoned at least once a year in each county."
This report was written by staff writer Drew Joseph. E-mail him at ajoseph@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=70521&tsp=1#ixzz0xBb2MwE7
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