Grand Jury Assails Case Against County Contract

Tersely rejecting as “baseless” charges raised by a state assemblyman, the San Diego County Grand Jury has closed an investigation into the county’s award of a contract for residential services for the homeless mentally ill.

Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) had asked the grand jury to investigate the contractor, Community Research Foundation, and to review the bidding process by which it won a contract worth $645,000 this year.

But in a report to San Diego County Superior Court Presiding Judge Thomas Duffy, the grand jurors said a variety of county agencies already had studied the contract and found no improprieties--a conclusion in which it concurred.

Close Investigation

“Over 2 1/2 years, the various county entities that have investigated the many allegations have not produced any evidence of criminality,” the grand jury report says. “The county has spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars investigating these baseless charges.”

The grand jury recommended that investigation of the contract be closed.

Stirling said late Tuesday that the grand jury’s finding is “fine with me.”

“There’s no way I can personally go out and investigate those charges. . . . So if that’s what the grand jury found, and I know them to be a good grand jury, so be it,” he said.

Stirling said he doesn’t consider the grand jury findings a “a rejection or a rebuff.”

“The situation is that whistle-blowers and others pour complaints into our offices, and we turn them over to the proper agencies and it is their duty to investigate,” he said. “And what they come up with is what they come up with, and I can’t go beyond that.”

Contract Competitor

The report said questions that Stirling raised about Community Research Foundation late last year appeared to have been inspired by complaints from Project Motivate Inc., a competitor for the contract.

Joyce Swineheart, a Project Motivate executive, complained to county officials last year that there were conflicts of interest in the selection process that awarded the homeless treatment contract to Community Research Foundation.

An exchange of correspondence between Swineheart and Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey, released with the grand jury report, indicates county officials investigated the concerns and concluded that the contract had been awarded properly.

According to the report, Stirling twice in the past two years informed the San Diego County district attorney’s office of allegations by Swineheart that county officials were involved in demanding payments or receiving kickbacks for the award of mental health treatment contracts. In both instances, the report says, investigators interviewed Swineheart but obtained no evidence of criminal activities.

The grand jury also said it found no grounds for allegations raised by Stirling that county contractors had histories of drug abuse or arrests.

Community Research Foundation has crisis treatment contracts with the county worth a total of $2.7 million.