by Sheila Sanchez, Editor, Los Gatos Patch -
The foreperson on the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury, Los Gatos resident Nell Griscom, 50, is happy to explain what her duties are on the civil panel.
She says that unlike other states, California has civil and criminal grand juries in each county.
It's formed by the random selection of citizens following certain criteria such as being older than 18 years of age, having no felony convictions, etc.
The way Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties select the bodies is by sending out thousands of mailers once a year in the spring asking residents if they're interested in serving.
The commitment requires a lot of time, Griscom said, between 15 and 20 hours a week.
Citizens who express an interest normally attend a meeting where they receive information about the job. The field is narrowed to 60 candidates who are then selected by the Superior Court judge who presides over the grand jury, Griscom explained.
From there, the field of applicants is cut in half, with the magistrate looking for a cross section of people who represent different age groups, gender, ethnicities and parts of the county.
The names are then put into a pinball-like machine for random selection, Griscom said.
In Santa Cruz County, the jury consists of 19 people. Up to 10 can be held over from the previous year, but members can't serve longer than two years.
As the foreperson pro-tem for the group, Griscom comes to the job with the experience she acquired during her first year of service.
"The reason I wanted to be on the grand jury was because I knew so little about government in general. I've never held any political office and I just felt it would be a great way to learn a whole lot ... about local and county government and politics. I've really enjoyed it," said this married mother of two children.
It's not a lucrative assignment. Members of the grand jury receive compensation for mileage travel to meetings and a per diem stipend of $15.
A veterinarian by profession, Griscom lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but has a Los Gatos address, in unincorporated Santa Cruz County.
Among the hardest things to learn have been the legalities related to the job. "It's a big learning curve," she said.
The body issued five reports during the past fiscal year, Griscom said, adding that each dealt with a different county or local government topic.
The most difficult task yet was the examination of the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency, Griscom said.
"It was a tremendous number of documents that the people who worked on it had to read and go through ... they had to attend many meetings and interview a whole lot of people," she said. "It was very time consuming."
How are topics chosen for grand jury investigations? Griscom said the ideas could come from jurors as long as they don't have an "axe to grind" and citizen complaint forms filed online in any language.
The body decides whether the requests are within its purview and often begins investigations into areas it wasn't able to conduct in the previous year, she said.
Does the grand jury have any teeth? "All we can do is investigate and report," she said. "What we hope for is that either the agency we're reporting on repairs itself or, if it doesn't, the topic is picked up by public citizens and they form their own committees and keep the issue in the media's interest."
For example, she said, for many years the grand jury investigated the City of Watsonville because of its financial mismanagement. The panel submitted several reports a couple of years a in row about the problem and the municipality's response was that there was nothing wrong with their government and it was doing fine.
However, Griscom noted, the grand jury elected to do an independent financial audit of the city, which was unusual. Results were published in January.
"We're the local government's watchdogs. We're not trying to tear people down, we're just reporting problems and recommending ways to fix them," she said.
Griscom has one dog, two cats and one guinea pig at home. Her two sons attend Los Gatos High School. She's lived in the same house in the Los Gatos mountains for 19 years.
When her term expires, Griscom said she plans to join the California Grand Jury Association, which has chapters in most of the state's counties.
Such chapter members are being viewed as extra power for the grand juries, able to take up matters to higher powers to correct problems, if needed, Griscom said.
"I didn't know the grand jury existed until I got that letter. I thought that there were only criminal grand juries," she said.
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