Grand Jury critiques county’s COVID-19 response
Discord among the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors over the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to lengthy, inefficient public meetings that took time away from other important issues and may have compromised the community’s health, the Tuolumne County Civil Grand Jury concluded in a report released last week.
The Grand Jury’s criticism of the board’s handling of the pandemic was part of a 33-page report released Friday that’s divided into two sections examining aspects of the county government’s employee and public safety.
“Our County has lost 183 citizens to the current pandemic,” Jury Foreperson Alcia Bergmann wrote in the opening summary of the report. “The Grand Jury hopes that the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors and County Administration will have the discussion: Could we have done better?”
Two additional COVID-19 deaths were announced by the county Public Health Department on Friday after the report was released, bringing the county’s current total as of Wednesday to 185.
The report specifically takes aim at a series of meetings in September last year when a significant amount of time was dedicated to debating state mandates related to COVID-19 that the board does not have the power to change.
“These discussions consumed many hours of time that could have been spent conducting other County business,” the Grand Jury wrote in the report.
Some of the board’s conduct at the meetings may have also violated its own written rules, regulations and code of conduct, the Grand Jury found.
One example cited in the re
“Two Supervisors have said they could not simply follow the guidelines laid out by county, state and national health officials. They stated that they prefer to do their own research and reach their own conclusions.”
— Tuolumne County Grand Jury Report
port was a one-hour slideshow presentation given by County Supervisor Anaiah Kirk, though he is not named in the report as is typical grand jury practice, at a meeting on Sept. 7.
The report noted that the presentation was not included on the agenda before the meeting, despite the board’s rules and regulations stating that each meeting agenda “shall contain a brief description of each item of business being discussed.”
At the same Sept. 7 meeting, which lasted more than seven hours, the board discussed an 11-page paper written by County Supervisor Kathleen Haff that the Grand Jury found to contain information characterized as “inaccurate or misleading” by health experts.
“This included promotion of ivermectin (an antiparasitic medication) and hydroxychloroquine (an anti-malaria medication), and also discredited information regarding COVID- 19 vaccines,” the Grand Jury stated. “This paper began with references to the Nuremberg Code, suggesting violations to research ethics in language certain to inflame discourse on the subject of vaccines.”
The Grand Jury was critical that the county Public Health Department was not invited to review the paper before it was released.
Such information advanced by the board that conflicted with county, state and federal health guidelines may have contributed to divisiveness and confusion within the community over COVID-19 and undermined efforts to protect residents from falling ill or dying from the disease, the report said.
The Grand Jury added that it’s “concerned whether it’s acceptable for supervisors to use their own research conclusions to influence public safety,” before noting the number of county residents who have died from the disease and how it hoped “none of these individuals’ health decisions were affected by the actions of these supervisors.”
“Two Supervisors have said they could not simply follow the guidelines laid out by county, state and national health officials,” the Grand Jury stated. “They stated that they prefer to do their own research and reach their own conclusions.”
Haff could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Kirk was unavailable for an interview Wednesday, but he provided a written statement in response to the Grand Jury’s report and said he plans to write a blog about it in the future.
“I want to thank the Grand Jury for their opinion on the Covid issue,” he stated on Wednesday. “However, I as well as much of Tuolumne County disagree with their assessment on forcing medical treatment.”
Among the Grand Jury’s recommendations at the end of the report is for the board to do annual training on its rules and regulations, the county code of conduct and code of ethics, as well as seek the advice of the county’s paid experts to vet information before presenting it to the public.
The Grand Jury also recommends revising the county’s code of conduct and code of ethics before the end of the year to make them more specific, as well as develop and adopt a governance manual for the board.
To view the full report, as well as others the Grand Jury has released this year on county Adult Protective Services, Tuolumne Utilities District, the new county jail and juvenile hall, go online to https://www.tuolumne. courts. ca. gov/ general- info/grand-jury.shtml.