Grand Jury Urges Cutting County Panels : Commissions: There are 85 advisory and regulatory boards and some meet only briefly. At least a dozen committees could be eliminated, saving time and money, the report says.

The Orange County Grand Jury on Monday recommended streamlining the county’s 85 advisory and regulatory boards, commissions and committees--some of which hold 10-minute meetings or pay their members as much as $500 per month to attend.

At least a dozen of the panels could be eliminated simply because they duplicate the work of government agencies or each other, the report said.

“I think that when we finally get to the supervisors with this, they are going to be . . . intent that something is done about it,” said Reynold Elkin, a member of the Grand Jury’s Administration Committee, which conducted the study. “It’s a cumbersome thing for them too.” In fact, no one in county government even has a grasp of the broad range of committees that exist, Elkin said.

“We question whether all of them serve a purpose based upon a lack of anybody knowing what they all do,” Elkin said.

The Grand Jury found that there may be little financial savings by eliminating unnecessary boards, commissions and committees, known as “BCCs.” But the jury noted that many county employees lose a lot of time during regular working hours on business conducted for the panels.

County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez said he “wholeheartedly” agrees with the jury’s principal recommendation that the county establish an up-to-date list of all active boards, commissions and committees, along with the names of their chairmen.

Elkin conceded that “there is a need arising periodically” for such ad hoc committees, but once the panels are established, they seem to live forever. One of the agencies, the Adult Day Health and Long-Term Care Planning Council, has not met in two years, he said.

Moreover, Elkin said, “there seems to be a trend within the Board of Supervisors to start some new ones.”

County supervisors or their aides fill 41 seats on the various agencies, while 26 of the 85 panels are funded partly or entirely by the county’s general fund, Elkin said. The Orange County Transportation Authority pays its members $100 per meeting, as much as $500 a month, the most of any of the independent panels, the Grand Jury found.

The jury found loose attendance requirements for some of the panels. And six “reported meetings consistently lasting less than 15 minutes.” The functions of 12 were duplicated by other government entities, Elkin said.

“It does not seem logical that any BCC can be productive if their meetings consistently last less than 15 minutes,” the report said. It questioned “whether public forum meetings lasting no more than 10 minutes are morally or politically fair to the public.”

Ironically, as the county has saved money cutting back on audits of the agencies, the result has been that no one knows how much they cost or exactly what benefits they provide, the Grand Jury said.