The 2017-18 Sutter County grand jury’s failure to publish a report is problematic by just about anyone’s definition.
At that, there are some folks in the community surfing the waves of indignity and blaming the county, wholesale. That’s unfortunate because as far as we can tell, the Board of Supervisors had nothing to do with the decision to pull the report and publish nothing. From the contents of a letter they directed to the state’s attorney general, they’re as flummoxed about the whole deal as much as anyone, except, perhaps, the actual jury members who, it’s been revealed, all resigned their posts just before the end of their tenure.
What happened? Was there some legal/libel problem in the report? Did it compromise the confidentiality of some protected matter? No one knows except the supervising judge and the jury members themselves (as far as we know).
Portions of the report that were intended to be published went out to officials – county and city – whose departments would have been impacted in some manner, good or bad, by the findings of the jury. They were enjoined to maintain confidentiality, since the report was actually not published.
We might be able to understand, were it explained to some extent, why the entire report could not be published. Was just a part of it bad, or all of it? Did jury members object to making changes as advised by their counsel and supervising judge? Is there a reason some of the report could not have been published?
We know that some county officials planned on making formal replies to the report. We don’t know if that meant they felt they were slighted in the findings or were simply clarifying or acknowledging some problem.
We just don’t know anything about what happened, other than rumors; and we don’t know why we don’t know anything.
The court system, as it should, gets very wide latitude in what is allowed into or kept out of the public eye. Courts can seal up information if they’ve a will to, until compelled to do otherwise. The Sutter County court system has even decided recently to limit access to the building’s hallways by journalists with cameras and to, evidently, prevent journalists and citizens from photographing public information made available via computers even when there’s no cost to the courts (whole other story, perhaps).
The point is, in this case, a grand jury whose findings we all look forward to year after year – a watchdog group we all rely on, bothersome or not for officials – should not be shut down without some explanation ...
We hope California Attorney General Xavier Becerra takes notice of the letters, sent by supervisors and our state assemblyman, asking him to look into the matter and we hope he ... or someone ... is able to negotiate some sort of explanation about what happened.
Citizens really do deserve to know something about what happened.
Our View editorials represent the opinion of the Appeal-Democrat and its editorial board and are edited by the publisher and/or editor. Members of the editorial board include: Publisher Glenn Stifflemire, Editor Steve Miller and Assistant Editor Andrew Cummins.
August 11, 2018
Appeal-Democrat
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