[Los Angeles County] Transparency is key

Los Angeles County Grand Jury recommends ways to improve transparency on the Signal Hill City website

At its July 26 meeting, the Signal Hill City Council voted to respond to the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury’s recommendations to improve the City’s website.

The Los Angeles Civil Grand Jury Investigative Committee conducted a report called “Appointed Commissions: Transparency will maintain the public trust.” According to City Manager Charlie Honeycutt, the report was partially based on a series of questions sent via email to city managers in December 2015.

The investigation was prompted following a scandal in the City of Compton. City officials there who were appointed as commission members received unreasonable compensation raises, according to Honeycutt.

The committee examined 88 city websites for information regarding each commission’s membership, mission statement and compensation.

According to the staff report, Signal Hill’s government website was judged “satisfactory.”

“The recommendations made by the civil grand jury were not extensive,” Honeycutt said. “They were pretty simple enough for us to make the modifications to our website. The civil grand jury was just responding to the way a couple bad-apple city leaders had conducted business. They want to make sure that cities are not hiding anything.”

July 28, 2016

Signal Tribune

By Sebastian Echeverry