Panel Assails Policies of Counsel Office : Government: Grand jury report charges county counsel’s office with obstructing investigations and conflict of interest.

The San Diego County counsel’s office has obstructed investigations of county agencies, operated in a conflict of interest and discriminated against minority staff members, the county grand jury charged in a report released Tuesday.

In addition, the report said the office, headed by County Counsel Lloyd Harmon, is overly defensive to criticism from other government agencies. The office’s sensitivity fosters a policy of petty retaliation against agencies that disagree with the county counsel’s management decisions, the report said.

The report, titled “Problem Areas in the Office of County Counsel,” charged that Harmon’s office is engaged in a conflict of interest, because it serves as legal counsel for county agencies and is required by law to advise the grand jury when it conducts civil investigations of the same agencies.

When forced to choose between its responsibility to represent county agencies and its duty to advise the grand jury when it is probing allegations of wrongdoing in county departments, the county counsel invariably chooses the former, the report said.

“In every instance county counsel was unable to provide legal advice to the grand jury because it felt it had a pre-existing duty to another client--the agency under investigation. . . . Rather than protecting county agencies from the grand jury’s scrutiny, county counsel ought to be facilitating the inquiry,” the report said.

The report recommended that the Board of Supervisors advise the county counsel that “the protection of departments from the scrutiny of the grand jury in its watchdog function is inappropriate.”

Harmon did not return phone calls to his office and could not be reached for comment.

In probably the most serious charge leveled at the office, the grand jury charged that Harmon’s staff tries to block investigations of county departments.

“The jury found county counsel not only unavailable to assist, but routinely obstructive in the jury’s pursuit of the facts,” the report added.

The report cited the county counsel’s role in the grand jury’s probe of the Juvenile Dependency unit, which represents the Department of Social Services in Juvenile Court cases, as an example of the office’s obstructionist policy.

“County counsel made numerous attempts to frustrate the grand jury investigation of the Juvenile Dependency system. This obstruction included blocking access to information, delaying the jury’s hearings, making access to witnesses and records as difficult and as expensive as possible and invoking confidentiality to protect the agencies rather than the legitimate interests of citizens,” the report said.

The report also included examples of what the grand jury called petty retaliation by Harmon and his staff when they disagree with critics of the office.

“It has long been the practice” for jurors to use the county counsel’s law library for research, said the report. But, during a probe of an unnamed county agency, Harmon “himself personally ejected” a juror from the library, the report charged.

“The personalization of petty conflicts appears to be an unfortunate attribute of this county counsel,” the report said.

According to the report, the “petty conflicts” have also led to disputes with other government agencies that “appear personal rather than professional in nature.” The disputes include the San Diego city attorney and state attorney general offices.

Recently, lawyers in the city attorney’s domestic violence unit criticized Harmon’s staff for “re-victimizing the non-offending parent” by removing the victim’s children from his or her custody.

The report said Harmon’s office responded to the criticism by “making city attorney access to juvenile records extremely difficult.”

In February, the grand jury released a report critical of the performance of the county’s Child Protective Services. Because the county counsel chose to represent the department and its employees, the panel was forced to hire the state attorney general as its legal adviser.

Grand jury foreman Richard B. Macfie said the county agreed to pay the attorney general’s legal fee when the investigation began. However, when the state presented a $16,000 bill to the county at the investigation’s conclusion, the “county counsel questioned the billing in its entirety,” said the report.

Macfie said the bill still has not been paid. In a telephone interview, he said he is convinced the county counsel’s reaction to the bill is an effort to intimidate the panel and make it difficult for future grand juries to obtain effective outside counsel.

The report also charged that the county counsel’s legal advice to county agencies whose employees were under investigation by the grand jury has forced the county to hire expensive private attorneys to represent the employees.

During the panel’s investigation of the Juvenile Dependency unit subpoenas were issued to various San Diego and county employees, private attorneys, a private therapist, foster parents and others.

According to the report, all witnesses, including San Diego police detectives and district attorney investigators, appeared before the grand jury without an attorney except for a deputy county counsel and Department of Social Services employees.

“On county counsel’s recommendation, the county provided outside private attorneys to each of these witnesses at county expense. The time to secure these attorneys delayed the hearings and wasted precious time,” said the report.

Although the other witnesses complied with the subpoenas and provided documents requested by the grand jury, Harmon’s office advised the Department of Social Services to challenge the subpoenas in court.

In another troubling finding, the grand jury charged that Harmon’s office discriminates against minority staffers.

The report described the discrimination in the county counsel’s office as “subtle forms of prejudice.” This prejudice makes it difficult for minority members to get promoted, the report said, and leads to a poor retention rate.

According to the report, the county counsel has retained only half of the minority attorneys it has hired since 1990, contrasted with a 100% retention rate for the attorney general and district attorney offices in San Diego for the same period, and 88% for the county public defender.

During the same period, the county counsel has hired eight minority attorneys, the local attorney general’s office one, while the district attorney’s office has hired six minority lawyers and the public defender 17.