LAKE COUNTY >> The Lake County Civil Grand Jury is three shy of the maximum 19 members. Term regulations have prevented current jurors from serving three consecutive years. And finding replacements hasn’t been easy — no one has signed up.
So the public watchdog group is in need of more volunteers for the 2016-2017 term.
Lack of awareness is what juror Grace Gault believes to be the main problem.
“When you say grand jury to the public, they think you’re doing work at the courthouse,” Gault said. “It’s a wonderful thing they do for the public and they need to know what they do.”
Civil Grand Juries across the United States serve two functions: as government-supported investigators and addressers of citizen complaints. Every year, an annual report of their findings is published and it always includes research into any place that contains citizen prisoners. Outside of that, it is free to choose any investigation into the government’s interests, which county employees must comply when asked to provide interviews and documents.
The findings also come with recommendations, however, governments are not compelled to follow them; they only have to officially respond to them within a few months after publication.
“It’s one of the purest forms of the purest democracy,” grand jury foreman James Baur said.
Despite its value to the public, the foreman claimed only about 100 copies of the lengthy recommendations documents are printed and most of them go to the various department heads and county officials. When asked if they were made available in the county’s libraries, Baur answered no.
He also blamed the low circulation on the small budget they receive from the county. The group was granted an estimate of $48,204 in the last fiscal year. However, that number has increased to $67,128 as approved by the Board of Supervisors, which recently proclaimed February as Grand Jury Awareness month.
Most of the budget goes into funding many of the investigations. A study of Lampson Field, for instance, found that a lessee of county-owned land owed the county more than $40,000. The Department of Public Works did respond to the claim on Sept. 8, noting that the tenant paid off $10,000 of his debt at the time of the rejoinder and proposed to “work with the tenant to continue reducing the past due balance until it is current.
For now, the Grand Jury is sponsoring a youth art contest with the winners receiving cash prizes and having their work included in its 2015-2016 annual report published at the end of June.
“We wanted to do something for the youth of Lake County but at the same time advertise the Grand Jury function,” Baur said. However, they’ve only received three entries. The deadline is March 30.
Other awareness strategies weren’t officially put in place, but it will look into social media to pass along the message and lead citizens to the last six reports and their responses located on the county’s website.
Service requires somewhere between 5 to 15 hours a week.
“Don’t go around complaining about your government if you aren’t willing to take a golden opportunity to do something about it,” Baur said.
March 2, 2016
Record-Bee
By Jason Morash
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