Why do politicians keep trying to tinker with the grand jury system?
Grand juries are independent government watchdogs; each county in California empanels one annually.
The 19-member panels spend a year reviewing the operations and inner workings of county agencies, cities and special districts, then publish reports on what they find.
Are grand juries important? You bet.
In the Inland Empire just recently, they’ve uncovered contracting irregularities in the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, excessive executive pay in the Rubidoux Community Services District and failures to conduct headcounts in Riverside County jails that could lead to escapes.
Grand jury reports sometimes embarrass public officials, it’s true. So every so often, one tries to rein it in.
In recent years, state legislators have floated bills to force grand juries to hold their hearings in public. (Such proceedings are secret for good reason: Witnesses reporting malfeasance won’t open up if what they say will be disclosed.).
Legislation has also sought to require grand juries to run their reports by those under investigation six weeks before publishing the reports. Thankfully that provision failed.
But now, state Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Temecula, wants to require grand juries to go over their findings with the subjects of their inquiries six days before publishing the reports.
His bill, SB 1292, would allow inquiry subjects to write comments on the reports and require grand juries to publish them along with their reports.
Stone told me the “exit interviews,” as he calls them, would prevent bad information from creeping into grand jury reports.
He said he was approached by the California Special Districts Association to carry the bill. He read it and thought it was a good idea.
It would enable grand jury targets to have their positions reflected in the reports at the same time they go public, he said. (Current practice requires subjects’ responses to be in 90 days after a report.)
The public will get a more “holistic” viewpoint from both sides of an issue, contemporaneous with the grand jury report, not three months later, Stone said.
The Special Districts group had heard from a number of its members that grand jury reports were coming out with information that was wrong, said Dillon Gibbons, legislative representative with the group.
A survey of members — water districts, fire districts, library districts and the like — showed a majority had concerns that published reports contained errors.
The group reached out to the California Grand Jurors Association and the two groups collaborated to craft the legislation, Gibbons said.
“We didn’t want to upend the grand jury system,” he said, adding that the groups want to preserve grand juries’ watchdog role, and they support the public’s right to know and hold government entities accountable.
But they believe having the exit interviews would keep early as information from being published, he said.
It’s a laudable goal.
I spoke to Burrell Woodring, who has served on San Bernardino County grand juries and headed the former grand jurors ‘ association. He said grand juries already hold exit interviews with their subjects to double-check facts; he didn’t see a reason to make it mandatory.
Mike Pernarelli, a former Riverside County grand juror, said he believes Stone is carrying the bill because of a grudge over a 2014 report that criticized Stone when he was a county supervisor.
The report criticized all the supervisors for using discretionary money to fund projects and events that would raise their profiles in the community, boosting their re-election chances.
Stone said this isn’t a grudge; he believes the critical report was healthy, causing Riverside County supervisors to tighten their procedures for allocating discretionary money.
Nevertheless, his legislation raises a concern that more restrictions will hamstring grand juries.
The subjects of critical reports should not be given veto power over what a grand jury publishes.
And publishing a counter-argument alongside a grand jury report diminishes the report.
What’s more, the six-day window for subjects to write their responses diminishes their ability to thoroughly consider the grand jury’s report and recommendations. The current 90-day practice is better.
The grand jury system has been a pretty healthy one till now. If politicians keep trying to nibble away at its independence, our form of government — reliant on checks and balances — will suffer.
People deserve to know what their government agencies are doing. Putting the watchdog on a leash does not serve the public interest.
May 1, 2016
San Bernardino County Sun
By Cassie MacDuff
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