“Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink; water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
So goes the infamous line from English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The words could also be applied to recent goings-on within the Santa Ynez River Water Conservation District, according to findings in a Santa Barbara County Grand Jury report released earlier this month.
The report, titled Currents and Undercurrents in the Santa Ynez Valley, accuses the river district’s Improvement District No.1 (ID 1) of lacking transparency, wastefully spending taxpayers’ money, and maintaining poor relationships with other local agencies.
According to the report, the problems stem from an escalating power struggle among the special districts and the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), a state-mandated agency charged with monitoring government jurisdiction.
ID 1 manages and distributes water in much of the Santa Ynez Valley area. The Santa Ynez River Water Conservation District is also parent to the Santa Ynez Community Services District, which manages the area’s sewage collection. In 2006, both of the special districts rejected a suggestion from LAFCO to form a merger for the sake of government efficiency and cost effectiveness.
The report says ID 1 officials initiated state legislation AB 2686 to establish the district as a special district independent of LAFCO jurisdiction. That bill passed through both houses of government but was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The report alleges the process cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars without giving them the knowledge needed to approve the decision.
The district and corresponding agencies, including the county board of supervisors, now have 60 to 90 days to respond.
On May 11, ID 1 general manager Chris Dahlstrom released a statement addressing the report, in which he said: “The district looks forward to taking advantage of this opportunity to respond to correct a number of omissions and inaccuracies it has identified in the report.”
The district’s five-person board of trustees plans to discuss the issue at an upcoming meeting, and eventually submit a formal response.
But as the Grand Jury—and the public—awaits word from the different agencies, other questions come to mind: What powers are grand juries endowed with, and just how effective are their reports at prompting change in government agencies?
To answer these questions, the Sun decided to follow up with three previously published reports to see what changes, if any, had occurred.
Toothless bulldogs or unsung heroes?
California is one of just a handful of states that boast grand juries at the county level. Jurors are typically volunteers, each serving year-long terms and spending about 20 hours a week or more conducting interviews and working on reports.
Under California Penal Code, civil grand juries have virtually no enforcement power. The juries issue reports and the agencies under investigation are required by law to respond within a specific time period. In responding to the reports, the agencies can choose to either agree or disagree with the findings and accompanying recommendations.
“The responses are limited: [The agencies] can agree with the recommendation and do it. They can say, ‘That’s already been done,’ which is what we love. Or they can disagree, but then they have to state why. And they can also ask for more time to respond,” said Jerry Lewi, the public relations chairperson for the California Grand Jurors Association. He’s also director of Ventura County’s Grand Jurors Association chapter.
If an agency disagrees, Lewi said, another Grand Jury can always follow up with the issue at a later date.
“The power of the grand jury is to get the public’s attention,” he said. “It’s analogous to the press’ impugned authority to make things happen.”
So should grand juries have more power?
“No. As members, we don’t have the expertise to [enforce policies],” he said. “It would be very difficult and very awkward to put that authority into a grand jury.
“It’s the jobs of the people elected to get the job done,” he added. “And if you don’t like what they’re doing, throw them out.”
A city revitalized
The citizens of Guadalupe didn’t quite throw their elected officials out, but they did eventually elect some new ones, following a series of grand jury reports calling the city’s government dysfunctional.
The 2002-03 Grand Jury criticized city leadership in its report Guadalupe—A City in Turmoil and Transition. The report focused on procurement problems, dysfunction on the City Council, and poor relations between the City Council and city administrator.
The city was in the hot seat again in 2005-06 when that year’s grand jury wrote another report, Guadalupe … Again. This report listed criticisms such as an expensive city-funded barbecue that hadn’t been approved by the City Council, an unqualified department director, and a City Council whose “[members were] more interested in embarrassing the other side than in running the city properly.”
The latest report, however, indicates a complete 180-degree turn in city leadership.
“How often can a grand jury write a report [that] congratulates and gives public recognition to the advances made by a city administration?” the 2007-08 Grand Jury wrote in its report, Guadalupe—Yet Again.
“The City of Guadalupe has a long way to go to be the city it wants to be. However, the attitude of the government officials and the citizens that the jurors interviewed was positive, optimistic, and confident that Guadalupe could become a major tourist and residential attraction on the Central Coast of California,” the report said.
So what changed?
“You become the butt of many jokes when you’re frequently in the spotlight in a negative way,” Mayor Lupe Alvarez said of the city’s past problems.
“We’ve worked really hard for the betterment of the community,” he continued. “I get a lot of credit, but the credit also needs to go to the entire council.”
The new council, he said, is completely focused on doing what’s right for Guadalupe. For that, the city can thank the grand jury reports and its voters.
The grand jury reports gave citizens the information they needed to elect more qualified individuals, Alvarez said. As a result, the current City Council is composed of a retired fire fighter, a retired postmaster, a teacher, and two businessmen.
“That brings a new level of commitment and respect for the position you hold,” Alvarez said. “And it sets the entire tone for the city and staff.”
The council is also working to make the city’s department head positions more fiscally attractive. But this can be a real challenge, considering other bigger cities can offer bigger salaries with better benefits.
“When you can’t afford to pay the going rate of a department head, it can reflect on the qualifications of the applicants,” Alvarez said.
The secret lives of cemeteries
But what if the agency mentioned in the report isn’t led by elected officials?
Take, for instance, special districts, such as the Goleta and Santa Maria cemetery districts. (For the record, water districts are usually led by elected officials, whereas cemetery district leaders are commonly appointed by county supervisors. That’s the case in Santa Barbara County.)
In 2006, the Grand Jury released a report, titled Water and Cemetery Districts: Do Special Districts Need Watching?, after receiving complaints from the public concerning the Goleta Cemetery District.
The grand jury found that the district’s board egregiously mishandled the then general manager’s retirement by allowing him to cash out $70,000 worth of sick leave (equivalent to a full year’s salary). According to the report, the board also used upwards of $8,000 in taxpayer and cemetery client funds to buy the manager a Rolex watch as a retirement gift.
Interviews with board members, the general manager, and other people revealed some problems in the district’s inner workings: The board never questioned the general manager and therefore became over-dependent on him when making decisions. Governing decisions were found to be made “on whim,” with little to no criteria or facts. Also, board members seemed to have a “profound misunderstanding of [their] responsibilities.”
These findings motivated the jury to look into the management of other special districts in the area, only to find that some of them—especially those with appointed members—were plagued by similar problems.
Another big problem: public apathy. The report also found that a lack of public concern over special districts led to a dangerous lack of oversight. But Santa Barbara County special districts aren’t the only ones with this problem.
“I like to call [special districts] hidden government,” Grand Jurors Association’s Lewi said. “Very few people understand or know what they are and what they do.
“I always tell grand jury members, ‘If you’re looking for something to do, Mr. Grand Juror, go look at what’s going on in the special districts in your area,’” he added. “[Special districts] are very fertile ground for grand juries.”
The Santa Barbara County special district report made a slew of recommendations, such as mandated ethics training under AB 1234 for board members and general managers, and better compliance with the Brown Act. It also called on county supervisors to attend at least two meetings a year, and said all the districts should have written management policies and working fax numbers and e-mail addresses (some of the 10 districts contacted didn’t).
Responses and follow-ups were generally positive with most of the districts. By 2007, all of them were in compliance with
AB 1234 and most of them had websites.
In 2008, however, a new grand jury report criticized the governance of the Santa Maria Cemetery District. This report focused specifically on a controversy surrounding the Angel of Hope memorial, which was established in the cemetery without a written contract between the board and a local church.
“As a result,” the report said, “controversy, bickering, allegations of professional and fiscal impropriety, as well as financial hemorrhaging, have ensued.”
The report called on the board to compose “without delay” a memorandum of understanding with the church regarding the memorial.
Since the report was filed, the district has created an MOU. The district also has a new general manager and certified public accountant, and the board of trustees has expanded from three to five members—four of which were appointed after the Angel of Hope controversy.
When asked how much the grand jury report motivated the changes, 5th District Supervisor Joe Centeno said: “It really didn’t, because we were [working on making changes] before the grand jury got involved.”
Centeno said his office had been getting complaints from the public before the report was released.
“I felt it was defective from the onset,” he said. “When you have only three people on the board, two of them can barely say hello to each other without violating the Brown Act.”
Centeno went on to say that he thinks grand jury reports are essential in the government process. But that doesn’t mean they should have enforcement powers.
“I think it would be extremely cumbersome for the Grand Jury to look at all the reports and demand change,” he said. “Those changes have fiscal attachments to most of them … it would really, really cripple the county government and create an extreme tax burden on our taxpayers.”
For example, he explained, what happens if voters say no to certain initiatives designed to channel money toward fixing a problem in government?
“Where are we then?” he asked.
Money, money, money
Sometimes the agencies under invest-igation want to comply with the grand jury’s recommendations, but they just don’t have the funds to do so. Such is the case—to an extent—with Santa Barbara County Child Welfare Services.
CWS has been the focus of several reports over the years, all criticizing the department for breeding an air of mistrust, high turnover rates, and ineffectually providing services.
Some of these issues were touched on in the 2007-08 Grand Jury report Child Welfare Services: A System of Care That Lacks Stability. The jury listed what it believed to be key faults in the system. There appeared to be a lack of consistency and continuity of individuals responsible for children in foster care. The report noticed an increasing turnover rate among social workers, as well as poor communication between the department and childcare providers. Youth emancipated from the foster care system lacked the basic skills to live self-sufficiently.
The report recommended the department create a more streamlined system that decreased the number of social workers interacting with an individual child. Other recommendations included expanding services for emancipated youth, investigating and mitigating the causes behind high turnover rates, and improving communication with the foster care community.
In her response to the grand jury, Social Services Department Director Kathy Gallagher said the recommendation to streamline the system needed further analysis. CWS cases, she explained, are often very complex, and each process—intake, family reunification, adoption, etc.—requires a social worker with that expertise.
“[The system] is much like a bureaucracy,” she later told the Sun. “To have a person who is an expert in every stage, and has all the required knowledge, it’s impossible. It’s not realistic. We know from trying in the past.”
As for increasing services to former wards of the department, Gallagher said it’s something she implements to the best of her ability. Many of the programs available to foster youth are state funded. They were also some of the first programs to hit the chopping block when the California economy started to nosedive.
“In the meantime, some economic stimulus money came down, and we were able to direct a portion of that money for our summer youth program,” Gallagher said.
The summer youth program is designed to help emancipated foster youth find jobs, and provides them with training to live more self-sufficient lives.
“We haven’t been able to expand the housing program, but it’s still a priority,” Gallagher added.
But there isn’t much money out there for housing.
And what about the high turnover rates and claims of poor communication?
Again, Gallagher said, it’s complicated.
“Our turnover rates are not inconsistent with other counties,” she said.
Partly, the figures can be attributed to normal causes, such as promotion or maternity leave. But some of the turnover is due to the nature of the job.
“Being a social worker is extremely demanding and stressful,” she said. “Some people get into it and after a couple years they realize it wasn’t the job they expected it to be, or you’re just burned out and you want to move on.”
Currently, the department has 15 vacancies, but Gallagher said she’s unable to fill those positions because they’re just not in the budget.
The claims of poor communication, she continued, most likely stem from the department’s “very stringent confidentiality clause.”
In other words, social workers can’t discuss much with the public.
“I can understand why that could make it look like we’re being evasive or unhelpful,” she said. “But we’re trying to protect the child.”
At the statewide level, Gallagher said, she’s part of a minority of officials in favor of relaxing the confidentiality clauses surrounding social work.
“I think there are ways of [protecting the children] without zipping our lips and not doing anything,” she said, adding that a few “adventurous legislators” have tried submitting bills with that purpose. But so far nothing has stuck.
Until one does, she encourages members of the public with concerns to contact the department directly.
“It’s perfectly OK to call the supervisor or ask for the manager,” she said. “In Santa Barbara County, we’re absolutely committed to working collaboratively with everyone who’s involved with the child.”
But she stressed that the department’s goal is always to do what’s best for the child, not for the adults involved in the case, including social workers.
News Editor Amy Asman works with foster children. Contact her at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 20-27, 2010.