Voter's Pipeline; Grand Jury at Work

The grand jury is now in session. I got a letter that was previously the speaker is money Novara from one of the nine thousand nine hundred eighty one Orange County grand jury. Like you the place is the main floor of the Orange County courthouse and the room is the Orange County grand jury chambers. The jury is meeting and one of its three full session days each week as it tackles its historic mission a tradition carried on from English jurisprudence to members that are playing watchdog on behalf of the people. It has 9000 members. This year it has 11 men and eight women all from Orange County and comprised of residents from all five super historial districts. They're chosen by lot from a pool of 30 names which in turn were selected from a pool of 16 names of local citizens. The initial 16 names were provided by superior court judges who had confidence in the integrity of the candidates. This year's grand jury like its predecessors will serve for one year and investigate in two broad areas the first is to monitor and evaluate the overall performance of county government. The second is to examine criminal wrongdoing and

corruption in public office. It was from grand juries like this one that more than 40 felony indictments for criminal wrongdoing by elected officials and their political associates were issued in recent years in Orange County. And criminal matters. The district attorney can ask the grand jury to issue criminal accusations or indictments on felonies including any wrongdoing by public officials. Last year the grand jury heard evidence on 11 major criminal cases and issued indictments to twenty four defendants and seven of those cases. It should be noted that grand juries can investigate and indict on criminal cases but they do not act as trial juries. Criminal matters occupy about 30 percent of the work time of grand jurors. Grand juries spend thousands of hours investigating and reporting on both the honesty and the level of efficiency of county government. The 9000 members are subdivided into eight committees each paralleling the departments of county government. These include standing committees for human services environmental

resources General Services Justice Administration affirmative action criminal complaints and the county audit. Such functions occupy about 70 percent of their time. When reports are issued on any matter they must have approval of at least 12 out of the 19 members of the full grand jury after their reports are made to the county supervisors each year. They can be acted upon or simply filed away. But grand jurors seem to have a collective idea Lin optimism and the confidence that at least a majority of all of their thousands of hours of work will result in some material benefit each year to the people of Orange County. Well here with us in the studios are four of the important members of that 19 very important men and women who make up the grand jury. Money divided the foreman of the 1981 grand jury he's been self-employed since 1984 as a publisher of specialty publications in the aviation and marine fields. He owns a printing plant

employs about 40 people in this business. A former airline pilot Monte lives in Huntington Beach. Carolyn of the foreman pro-tem for the grand jury she a sister had been on a part time basis for the Franklin life insurance company doing public speaking and bookkeeping. She'd worked for Governor Brown's office on citizen initiative and voluntary action. The Orange County Community Development Council and the Junior League She lives in Corona Del Mar.. Ken Keynes is the chairman of the criminal complaints committee of the grand jury he's director of the POS associates specialist and people oriented systems. He's been manager for human resources of the American telecommunications Corporation and was the planning commissioner for the city of Orange and he lives in Orange. John McGinnis is the chairman of the General Services Committee of the grand jury he's a high school English teacher at Newport Harbor High School and has served as faculty Association president and yearbook adviser. He's held various positions as a member of the California Teachers Association and he lives in Huntington Beach. We've taken our audience on a little trip to the grand jury to watch all of you in one of your session

days. But I would like to have some subjective reflections from any or all of you about what it feels like to be a member of the 19 member grand jury. What are the experiences what are your impressions of that experience. I want to start with them again. Well the first feeling I had was the joy of learning so much I when I started out I knew very little about Orange County government. And so the first two months was a real learning experience. And and that was what I enjoyed most about it those early days. Ken thank you. Do you call him Mr. Maginnis I thought you were going to be a communist. What about your experience between I felt that I had something to bring to the grand jury and I have been a consultant for many years and I've done a lot of consulting for the county of Orange and I'm familiar with governmental processes so my work with the Planning Commission and I felt that I could contribute something where

many of our fellow jurors have no experience I could lend a hand. Did you want to be know what you wanted to be on this grand jury was something that you look forward to having welcomed. Yes and no I was asked to be on the grand jury and I acquiesced. But you did you look forward to it I mean when it when it became evident that you were one of the nominees that you might be selected We're going to show people how you did get the letter. Yes. You look forward to it. I did. CAROL LIN Well I too look forward to it I was lucky enough to participate in a public affairs training course about a year ago put on by the crawl foundation and during that process I became interested in in the County and Orange County because it's a fabulous dynamic unusual County. And so I thought perhaps I might have something to offer. When you asked how I feel I feel different every day it's some days it's very frustrating and some days it's exhilarating. It's a lot of hard work. But I I think when the year is over I'm going to know that I've enjoyed

and benefitted a lot by participating. What are the frustrations you said somebody the refectory and what seemed to be the source of a lot of your frustration. Well the immediate last frustration probably is just working with 19 people have you picture 19. I'd say quite dynamic people getting together in a room with relatively equal power in that room and coming to a consensus is quite a process and I don't think I've ever been in a organization that operates exactly like this. And I think that's where a lot of the maturity comes in on that in the 9000 people is arriving at a consensus. I think of you being an airline pilot. An entrepreneur running a publishing business with 40 people working for you. All of that going on at the time you're trying to be a grand jury and you're looking into the audit and airport and the freeways and all the things the grand jury looks into what does it look like what you're going through does cut into my time somewhat but I've never been involved with any community matters and I was asked to

be a member of the grand jury or put my name in. And so I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn the government. And so that's basically why I did it. I think we should show our audience exactly the random way in which a grand jury is selected. First 60 members are nominated by judges. And then of the 60 that is cut down to 30. And these are all over the county and then they're put into a big big steel box just 30 members in a box to turn round and round and where it stops nobody knows. And from this experience of turning this big drum which is kept locked the county clerk then pulls out the names of the 19 grand jury members and that's exactly how this grand jury was born. From 60 by the judges down to 30 in the in the steel drum and then 19 of those members taken out in this case with 11 men and eight women. I let come back to you Mrs. Lynn the NASS Q-Bot diversity that's an interesting word. We see that Yuri's grand juries like to talk about having a diverse background.

What kind of diversity these are evident on the grand jury. Actually as you know there's five supervised Auriol districts so that's probably a good starting point they try to balance that initial 30 deadline only 30 group with equal numbers of participants from each district and then the natural obvious diversification would be male female. And looking back through some of the last couple years papers they have been quite accurate with admin. That's the easy one. Also minority groups this year we have one black and one Hispanic and we traditionally do not have enough applications from members of the minority groups. And I think that that's probably a key area that we need to work on in terms of diversification. What about other diversity Republicans Democrats North County South Dakota. People in the labor market people who are entrepreneurs are Britons.

Right that's a good point. I think that they take all those factors into account. It's not always easy to make it perfect as you can well imagine and then when you draw the 9000 names out of the 30 you have the element of luck involved in there also. But we did a profile of our particular jury this year and would tell you Well we found that on our jury we have at least 18 different boards and commissions for just members of our jury of served on county boards and commissions. We have professionally we have several consultants who have handled situations with the county that give that provides us a tremendous resource. Now if you're having these members on that. Jury. And then on the other hand we have people with money who have not participated in county government work but offer a very needed dimension and perspective. And I feel I think most of us this year feel that it has been quite well balanced in terms of diversification. I have to ask you as a boss if this were right they called you the ramrod of the ranch

with all the ranch hands and the 1000 members with the ranch and how much of a boss can you be since you are. We saw you wrapping the gavel there and calling the meeting to order how much of a ramrod Abbas are you and how much I mean these 18 other members. Free Agency speaking to us they will. Well that was about it and when you saw the gavel that was it basically I do what pleases the panel. If if if I would come up with something that they did not approve of they would certainly tell me about it and I would take would be 12 hands to change it. So I make suggestions in this sort of thing and I do have a certain amount of power in some areas override parliamentary procedures and things of that nature. But basically it's my position to carry out the will of the panel. For example when I signed communications he has my name on it. That just means that 12 people 12 people okayed that and I'm just certifying that I would do anything to get that gets out of that grand jury room to the public takes as I said hands

take 12 people to say yes we're going to say this to the public and when I sign it I'm saying that that that was the Word of the grand jury. You know I don't a single person I see. And so you're saying it's very much the body acting so he doesn't even agree with what he has to sign. Sometimes Besides I mean he didn't mean Oh yeah absolutely. They tell if 12 people say sign it I sign it. How about you would you have any other observations about that about this. It's much more than a debating society obviously because you've got to do reports and the network has to come out of that. That's right and I say one thing theaters that you mentioned in the introduction that I've held several positions in the CTA and their colleagues back in Newport Harbor Hi yeah I've never held any positions and I know I'm a member of the California Federation of Teachers. Oh ok I just wanted my colleagues to understand that yes I think the California Federation TDA OK think about this observation. How about acting as a free agent and being working in the

body. There is no such thing as acting as a free agent on the grand jury. You are a representative of the grand jury when you go out and conduct an interview and we have a procedure whereby we simply do not even conduct interviews unless there are at least two members. When we were conducting our interviews people in preparation for the acquisition report the vote counting change. We usually had at least three sometimes four or five but always we would report back to the panel and they would give us further direction. So there is no such thing as a creation of a grand jury. I think our viewers might be interested in knowing the in the immensity of the scope of what you are but you're responsible for doing. Here is one of the most dynamic counties in the world second largest in the state of California. Ten thousand employees a budget of something like six hundred forty three million dollars. With all the diverse departments that you have to manage the super agencies in those sub agencies within those super agencies. How do you go about just saying I know you've got a committee. But how do you go about

just saying if they're doing their homework at the dignity or doing what they're being paid for by the taxpayers to do who want to tackle that one can you're just pissed off and you're smiling about that. I think yeah you can you see when you smile you're in trouble you know. That I think I think one of the first things to point out is that money neglected to mention that he has a very large power he selects the committee chairpersons and he has to do that at a time when he knows very little about them. And only has a resume and maybe he's met one or two or three during a meeting and it's a very very hard job to do. And the jury itself decided how it would organize to tackle the job of a committee looking at the county and that's what the eight committee committees are broken down into the function is it the jury has to perform one of the things that I think remarkable about is that this

absolutely random selection we've seen out comes out of the box when it is a random selection of people. Trying to look into this thing do not object of job the opportunity to act really on behalf of the people and guess what the cuts down to what you're doing is on behalf of the people. But the monumental scope of the job is as seems to me awesome trying to keep tabs on that and make recommendations. Maybe I should show our viewers like your predecessor grand jury this is a report of the immediately outgoing grand jury the 19 79 80 grand jury this book that I'm holding way that by the pound and I have maybe two pounds it has two hundred and fifty two pages in it. I've all kinds of reports. Now you will compile a report like that and I understand these reports will come out throughout the year then they'll be coalesced into a large report at the end of the year. Maybe we could talk about. One report just taking out of the one report I'm holding in my hand one of the reports you did come out of the ninth 80 this current grand jury.

This has 33 pages to it and it has to it made a lot of headlines when this is required. Choice brought out and brought out I understand with the president you had a press conference also about it. And in a nutshell this was very critical of the voting machines and certainly we were all talking about voting machines both before and after the election and it took the supervisors a little to task or for not doing more homework up front before they acquired this system that we have now. Maybe I should go to the GSA your GSA Committee General Services Administration chairman on the injury. Tell us about the anatomy of that report and then maybe that will sort of explain to viewers about other reports. Well as soon as I was named chairman I sat down with my committee and we went through a list of of departments within general services agency that we could look at. We knew at the time that the state commission was going to hold a meeting within a week or so to possibly to certify the vote counting system so we decided to have a tour of the registrar of voters Department look at the machines at the time we we

really did not intend to write a report. We just wanted to educate ourselves with regard to the tackler. But as we talk to more people listen to tape recordings of me as we weave began to see that that there was a decision making process which preceded the purchase of that system and that there appeared to be problems or inadequacies in the process. And so we decided to focus not on the machinery itself we were not so critical of the machinery in that report as we were critical of the supervisors process in purchasing it. And so what we did was I started interviewing people and as we interviewed people they would suggest two or three other people to interview. By the time we were done we had interviewed 33 people 31 people and we had listened to tape recordings of four board meetings. We had read hundreds of pages of documents and then we sat down and discussed these we were continually sharing it with the panel as a whole. And then we sat down and wrote the report. And how many members on your committee five or six it varied during that process.

You are so sure that our viewers understand about the pay you get tremendous paid for him to send you $25 per meeting for no more than 3 meetings a week. You know the word that's the maximum you can be paid to 75 a week in my correct. That's right and then your committee and this one could you assess for us or give us an estimate about how many hours it took over and above these three days that you meet anyway. I couldn't give you an estimate of the hours but during the last month or so of the work on that we were we were working five to six days a week on that. We would we meet typically on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday but our committee in order to get this work done was meeting as well on Monday and Friday. And before that got out of the grand jury what happened then that we were talking about the vote of 12 members who said Tell us what happened before this got put out. I mean we we have we set up a special committee this year called the editorial review committee and part of its function is to look at these reports but. The committee the committee got the information together. We wrote the report up and then we submitted it to the panel as a whole and

about the back panel then went over the report page by page line by line made suggestions ask questions that was put to cast it that way. Well we had to limit any discussion or limit we vote on everything if I you know if we say you should you interview one other person we they direct me to 12 people 90 people that they say go interview this other person find out that information. So we go out and we do that sort of thing then suggestions were made there were many deletions many additions many revisions of sentences until it eventually represented the will of the you know the grand jury and when it finally came out and you had a press conference where you wanted to communicate something to the people Warren County and say this is something we think ought to be called to the attention of the electorate. A lot of the people whether voters or not voters. Then you had another vote on that as a write in saying we're going to hold this conference and we're going to vote to release this. Right. Final approval. Do any of you have any subjective opinions about how effective this is another with what you accomplish by this exercise of doing this even though it might not

be legally binding that the supervisors have to do this or do that differently. What do you feel is the major value what this exercise is that Mr. Maginnis just described. Well the main power of it is the disclosure of the information we put in there that is probably the the only power of it. Do you have any kind of protection legal protection or somebody said I don't like what the grand jury said I'm going to sue all the members Are You Covered by legal protection some kind of legal protection when you sit and act and do things with the grand jury. No more than any ordinary citizen. When we issue an indictment of course we are. Yes but but as far as issuing a report our best protection is to write the truth then. And so it's very important that we be responsible and acquire facts and I was sponsible picking up on what you said I'd like to refer to one report for example from the last grand jury because it points out how many many grand juries after all of their thousands of hours of work give a document like this to the supervisors and say these are the things we think are wrong or the needed

redress in Orange County. And then one of two things can happen they can be put onto a shelf and filed away or it can be acted upon. Here is one that your most recent grand jury concluded. They're talking about the airport and this is just one of them. It's saying although it's recognized in the past much opposition have been voiced over the suggestion that the ultra Marine Air Station be used by commercial aircraft in conjunction with a military consideration should be given to the purchase of land adjacent to the base for possible development of the commercial side of the proposed joint U.S. airport and so forth are talking about the joint use thing. Obviously this was not acted upon by the past grand jury and maybe there was a grand jury before this which said something like that maybe you will say something like that. Does that demoralize you that you may be saying something that is not acted upon. No. What would be I got us an opinion on that because I talked to several people who had been on who had been grand jurors prior to the year I am now serving. And I asked the same question because I know it's very frustrating to spend as many many hours as we do coming

together trying to serve our watchdog function and represent what we hope are the interests of the county and then do a report that isn't acted upon. But often it takes two three sometimes four five years of repetition perhaps to get a point across. And even if we don't get it acted upon this year there's always the chance that it will be acted upon and at a later time. So I don't feel that that's off at all. And in fact I think it's very important that the 9000 people state how they feel. It is very interesting we did not go through this exercise but it would be interesting to go through the whole 250 pages and see how many of the recommendations by the previous grand jury did meet with some kind of action maybe 80 percent did not maybe 75 percent did not and I'm not aware of that but I do know that many times in the past grand juries having covered stories or grand juries in the past 30 years in Orange County and many times grand juries will do exactly what you had said Mrs. Lynn they will say this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong and maybe six years of many years or seven years. A

grand jury statements calling attention to that produce the action some kind of action to rectify it and we haven't talked about the criminal nature of it in that nor much of the criminal area has a secret that you're supposed to be secret but what can you tell us about your experience of can Cain's average citizen suddenly getting involved with Freeway killers indictment that kind of thing. Well I can't tell you much about. What we get involved with other than what has already been released in the media. Wait a minute when you're on a criminal matter is it your whole committee or the whole grand jury hears Lisa. Well it depends if we're hearing a potential indictment then the entire grand jury higher grounds are involved. When we get a criminal complaint that is sent to us by a citizen the entire panel decides that that complaint comes to our normal

complaints committee. Yes and then we act on it working in concert with the district attorney because we are not permitted to investigate criminal complaints on our own. We we have to use the district attorney's investigative arm or for investigating the district attorney. The state attorney general. Yet that's not going to say that the district attorney's office itself could theoretically be investigated by the grand jury. The grand jury can investigate any commission committee including the judges in the county of irony. And I think there's a criminal complaint before we leave that we've touched on this before before we leave this one of someone who may be listening to this program think something is wrong either something is wrong of a criminal nature or something is wrong. Maybe the operation of some one of the branches of the county or city or state. With an Orange County as it's affecting Orange County What would you tell him to do. Well the first thing they would do would be to write a letter and the grand jury does not react to anything that is that is anonymous. So the proper way would be to initiate

it by a letter that time that would be read to the entire jury. And then I would assign it to an appropriate committee. The committee would do the research on it and see if it was a matter for the grand jury and then report back to the panel with their with their recommendations on it. And then usually the panel accepts the committee recommendations and that's that's what we do. Do you respond by individual if Suzy Jones on Huntington Beach writes a letter. Do you respond to Susie Jones or do you or you may not respond to it. You know we always respond we always respond one way or another. And we would respond directly to back to her. I see now another question that has always puzzled me and maybe you can make it more clear for me when you're investigating many complex things like voting machines obviously you weren't all born as a voting machine experts. You're investigating I should say studying among other things the airport. You're not all born as airport experts So how do you effectively carry out a thorough job of investigation of something as complex as for example an

airport and whether it's going to have joint use or not have joint use or whether houses are being built too close to it or they're not being built too close to it. How do you suddenly become in that area. Airport experts are usually the first place they will start is at the top they will go to the top the top manager of the agency or whatever and discuss things with them and then go on from there. One thing that usually lead to another. Now John just John Carolyn was also on the GSA Committee and she was quite. She was quite. She did a lot of work in that and they just investigate the various areas and just follow each thing down and this and this and so it points up the important thought the selection process of the jury because hopefully within the 9000 people people there will be one or two who have some expertise in most areas and if you need an outside expert you could bring one in his column in. Yes. OK this has been a great exciting thing and someone to the people in Orange County should know about a very most unique thought. To care about the people in the way the

government and all levels is carried out in Orange County an extremely unique group of people. I wish you good luck and good fortune in your and you work for the coming year. Thank you. I think thank You that time is almost up now and I do want to thank all of our own kind of grand your members remember you can write a letter to them as it's as simple as that writing letter if you think something is wrong it's their investigating and their limits of investigation are almost unlimited. Next week at this same time we'll be discussing one of the hottest most vitriolic issues that will be coming up in the state of California whether to build or not to build a peripheral canal and that gets into the referendum on the proposed road on April 7 to whether we do or don't build it. So please join us next week at the same time and we'll be looking at the peripheral canal. I'm Jim Cooper thanks for being with us.