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California’s civil grand juries (“CGJs”) are one of the oldest institutions in the state’s civic architecture. Enshrined in the state constitution, the CGJs were conceived as a check on local government — a body of ordinary citizens empowered each year to scrutinize the operations of counties, cities, and special districts, and to report their findings to the public. The idea is a noble one: participatory democracy in its most direct form, the citizenry keeping watch over those who govern them.
I know this because I recently sat on one. And the experience left me with serious doubts about whether this institution, as currently structured, is doing more harm than good.
Good intentions, glaring gaps
Let me be clear about what the CGJ is not. Unlike a criminal grand jury, it is not presented a docket of cases by a prosecutor. There are no attorneys marshaling evidence. I arrived naively expecting something like that — a structured legal proceeding guided by trained professionals. What I found instead was a group of volunteers who quickly made decisions about the validity of the few citizen complaints that had come in, and then proceeded to select their own subjects to investigate, conduct their own investigations, and render their own judgments. Prosecutor, defense, and judge — all rolled into one. The term “checks and balances” does not come to mind.
That structural problem is compounded when the jury’s composition doesn’t reflect the community it oversees. The jury I served on was almost exclusively white — in a county where 40% are not. When the same body decides what to investigate, how to investigate it and what conclusions to draw, the demographics of that body are not a side issue. They determine whose concerns get elevated and whose get ignored.
The California Grand Jurors’ Association does an admirable job providing incoming jurors with a two-day training program covering how to identify cases, conduct investigations, and write reports. Two days. That is the entirety of the baseline preparation before these citizen volunteers are sent out to evaluate the professional operations of county departments, public agencies, and special districts. If the CGJ finds that they do need legal guidance, its advisor is the county counsel, who also happens to represent the very county being investigated, notwithstanding assurances that the designated attorney is walled off from the rest of the office.
Some wealthier, more populous counties supplement the two days of instruction with additional training of their own. But that only sharpens the inequity: the counties that are best positioned to run a qualified grand jury are also the ones with the deepest bench of relevant experience to draw on. In the rural counties where the institution is most prone to failure, those two days are all there is. It’s a little like giving a volunteer two days of fire training — rather than the normal 200+ hours — and asking them to save lives and put out your house fire. The intent is sincere. The preparation is not remotely adequate.
The problems go beyond the expertise of the individual jurors. Standing up a fully functional investigative body from scratch every single year is itself an enormous undertaking — recruiting members, establishing internal governance, learning a new records management system, selecting and scoping investigations, managing document requests, conducting interviews, and producing polished public reports, all within twelve months. Our jury was a testament to how brutally difficult that is. Nearly half the jurors disappeared before the term ended, including members who actually brought investigative experience to the table.
The procedural rules governing how the jury gathers testimony compound all of these challenges. Witnesses are required to appear and answer questions — refusal risks a subpoena — yet they are prohibited from discussing those questions with anyone outside the room to confirm accuracy. They receive no questions in advance, arriving unprepared to give thorough, accurate answers on complex institutional matters. And they testify without being placed under oath, meaning there is no legal consequence for answers that turn out to be wrong, whether by accident or design.
The theory is that witnesses and documents will check each other — that contradictions and corroborations across multiple sources will allow the jury to triangulate the truth. The reality is something murkier: a tangle of varying, sometimes conflicting accounts from witnesses who were unprepared, unsworn, and unable to consult colleagues or records before answering. From that tangle, the jury selects the version of events that best fits the conclusion it has already begun to form. That is not investigation. It is confirmation bias with a gavel.
To be fair: across 58 CGJs operating each year over the past 175 years, there have no doubt been excellent reports — genuine contributions to public accountability. But a stopped clock is right twice a day. Pointing to the occasional standout report does not make the case for the institution; it makes the case that the exception does not make the rule.
The small population problem
The structural weaknesses of the CGJ are amplified considerably in counties with small populations. In a major metropolitan area, the jury pool is large enough that you might reasonably expect to seat jurors with relevant expertise — someone who has worked in public administration, a former investigator, a planner, an accountant. In a small population county, you take who you can get. That makes it particularly crucial for citizens in these communities who do have investigative or professional experience to step up and serve.
The result, in practice, is a rotating cast of retirees and engaged citizens — people with genuine civic spirit but rarely with the professional background the work demands. It is asking people who have never spent a minute reviewing a building application, evaluating a budget, or managing a public contract to credibly critique the work of professionals who do exactly that every single day. The gap between the jurors’ expertise and the procedures they are investigating is not a minor problem. It is the central problem.
And that gap has real consequences. Critical reports issued by jurors lacking substantive knowledge and investigative experience run a very serious risk of driving out the public servants they target — people often working for understaffed, underfunded agencies doing their best on shoestring budgets. Leveling criticism from a position of procedural authority but practical ignorance is not accountability. It is, at its worst, a form of glorified bullying dressed up in civic virtue.
Consider what that can look like in practice. The county I served in had been the subject of two consecutive critical grand jury reports targeting the lack of procedures at the planning department, among other issues. Not long after, the director of planning resigned and took the same position in a neighboring county with a larger population. That departure may have been purely coincidental or an indirect consequence of the sustained scrutiny.
But everyone can agree on what comes next: finding a replacement planning director will be extraordinarily difficult for a county that is financially broke, recently received a state audit criticizing its management, currently has no permanent CEO, no permanent county counsel, and now no planning director. The grand jury may have identified real problems. It may also have made them considerably worse.
And throughout this process, the burden on the agencies under investigation is rarely discussed. Responding to a CGJ requires substantial staff time — locating and producing documents, responding to interview requests, and formally answering each finding in the published report. For the kinds of lean agencies that are most frequently the subject of these investigations, that burden is anything but trivial. Understaffed local agencies that are already struggling to carry out their core missions are asked to divert scarce resources to satisfy a process run by people with limited context and investigative experience. The cost to the public, in delayed services and diverted staff, is real — and almost entirely invisible.
There are better ways
None of this is to say the oversight function the CGJ is meant to serve is unimportant. It is essential. Local government, particularly at the special district level, can operate with startlingly little public scrutiny. The question is whether the CGJ is the right tool for the job.
California counties already have district attorneys’ offices with trained investigators. Each county’s Local Agency Formation Commissions — LAFCOs — regularly produce rigorous, professional analyses of special districts. Investigative journalism, properly resourced, has the expertise, the independence and the public accountability to do this work well. Any of these alternatives, given the resources currently devoted to the CGJ system, would likely produce more credible and accurate results.
The CGJ was born of a genuine democratic impulse — the belief that ordinary citizens should have the power to hold their government accountable. That impulse is worth honoring. But honoring it means being honest when the institution we have built around it is no longer equal to the task. California’s CGJs, particularly in the smaller counties that do not enjoy the luxury of larger populations with a wide array of expertise, is in need of serious reform — or serious reconsideration.
I say this as someone who served on one, who believes in the purpose it was designed to serve, and who came away convinced that good intentions are no substitute for the right tools.
Dan Potash worked for and with government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels for all of his 35-year professional career, mostly as an attorney.
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.