Board Vows to Follow Up on Grand Jury Advice

The Board of Supervisors resolved Tuesday to keep better track of Orange County Grand Jury recommendations by establishing a committee that will review whether government agencies implement the panel’s suggestions.

The action comes after years of criticism from grand jurors, legal experts and others who complain that many important findings of the grand jury are simply disregarded or forgotten.

Over the last decade, the panel has raised questions about government problems that years later became public scandals, including the lavish perks received by officials at the Santa Margarita Water District.

“These are things that in the past have sometimes slipped through the cracks,” Board Chairman Roger R. Stanton said of some past recommendations. “I agree these need to be tracked.”

The new committee will be made up of former grand jurors selected by the Grand Jurors Assn. of Orange County. The panel will review the status of past grand jury recommendations with the appropriate government agencies, and prepare periodic reports on its findings for the Board of Supervisors and County Chief Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier.

Committee members will receive no compensation for serving, and officials said the panel will require little financial support from the county.

Mario Lazo, foreman of last year’s grand jury, said he hoped the tracking system will improve government’s response to panel suggestions, but expressed some skepticism.

“Sometimes the jury releases its reports at the end of the term, and the supervisors virtually ignore them,” Lazo said. “Some juries have been so frustrated by the inattention that they think [the reports] are not worth a hoot.”

The grand jury consists of 19 citizens who serve one-year terms. Its most publicized duty is to evaluate evidence in criminal cases, but the panel also serves as the public’s watchdog by reviewing government operations in search of inefficiencies, weaknesses or deficiencies.

Some jury findings that were ignored have come back to haunt government officials, Lazo and others said.

Grand jury reports in 1981 and 1987 found that water and other special districts operated with little public scrutiny and were ripe for abuse. The reports got little attention until 1993, when The Times revealed that two officials at the Santa Margarita Water District accepted lavish gifts from contractors in violation of state ethics laws.

A grand jury report criticized the county for not exercising more oversight over longtime Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron’s office several years before his risky investment practices plunged the county into bankruptcy.

“I think there has to be process for us to be aware and alert to these recommendations and suggestions,” Supervisor Marian Bergeson said. “There needs to be some way of determining that someone is paying attention to them.”

Bergeson proposed that the grand jury committee also track the recommendations of the county’s privatization task force and government practices oversight committee, but other supervisors were cool to this idea.