Craig Isom shares about his experience serving on a civil grand jury.
After retiring 5 years ago, I was eager to get more involved in my community at last. After a career spent building some useful skills and life lessons, I hoped to apply some of those learnings to help the city or county I live in. Well, it’s taken me 5 years of stumbling around until I found just what I was looking for – I am now a full-year volunteer in my county’s Civil Grand Jury.
So what is a civil grand jury? These are not the grand juries you read about in criminal cases. Every California county sponsors a civil grand jury, made up of 19 residential volunteers who sign up for 12 months’ service from July through the following June. These volunteer juries monitor the effectiveness of their host county government operations, plus the operations of every city, school district, and all the other special districts that fall within their host county.
Even though you may not have heard of these civil grand juries, I can assure you that local government officials are very aware of them and held accountable to responding to the findings and recommendations of jury reports which review their operations. Think of us as unpaid management consultants who are trying to ensure our taxpayer funds are being managed efficiently and as intended. I love the camaraderie of working with fellow residents who share my passion for learning how our local governments serve us and looking for ways to improve that service.
Of course, not many people are in a position to do this. Civil jurors probably work at least 25-30 hours per week, though mostly from the comfort of our homes. We have intense discussions, but we’ve grown to respect our differences and have learned that our proposed solutions for local government are much more reasonable and sustainable after they’ve withstood the scrutiny of our own critiques! Talk about a life lesson. This ol’ dog is still learning new tricks.
With a Perspective, I’m Craig Isom.