Sign up for San Francisco's Civil Grand Jury!

[Thank you to Simone Manganelli, who wrote on our blog last year about his experience on the Civil Grand Jury, for returning this year with a follow-up. The deadlines are coming up soon; we hope you’ll consider signing up to serve this year.]

Last year, I wrote an article about the Civil Grand Jury.  At the time, I was a serving member of the 2020-2021 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury.

For those of you still unfamiliar with the concept of a civil grand jury, it is a unique mechanism in California that empowers ordinary citizens to maintain transparency in local government.  While the concept of a criminal Grand Jury might be familiar to many people, the Civil Grand Jury’s purview is not to investigate criminal charges, but to investigate local government.  Every year, all 58 counties in California convene a Civil Grand Jury (henceforth called “the Jury”), which is made up of residents of that county.  The members of the Jury then collectively decide which aspects of local government they would like to investigate, perform interviews with local government officials, and read through documents and reports to come to a conclusion about how well that aspect of government is performing.

Well, it’s a year later, our Jury released four reports, and a new Jury has been empaneled in San Francisco.  (They’ve already released their first report, too.)  I’d like to give an update on the reports we released last year, and to ask again for San Francisco residents to consider joining the Jury.

During my term on the Jury, I was heavily involved in creating our report entitled “Van Ness Avenue: What Lies Beneath”.  (Catchy subtitles seem to be a tradition for Juries across California.)  I served as committee chairperson for this report, and was heavily involved in interviewing, writing, and editing this report.

I’m super proud of this report in particular.  The subject matter was particularly difficult to wrap our heads around, but we dived in and pored over documents and spreadsheets to make sure we understood how San Francisco contracts and manages a large construction project that will affect the lives of San Francisco residents for years to come.  And if you missed it, the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project officially opened earlier this month!  Many of the members that wrote this report attended the opening ceremony of the Van Ness BRT and rode the first bus rides on the BRT lanes.

How did our report affect San Francisco city government?  I’m also proud to say that the Board of Supervisors officially agreed to study or implement every single one of the recommendations that we made in our report.  This is super-important, as it will make it easier for San Francisco to focus on the quality of construction when beginning a large project, rather than focusing on low cost.  Now that San Francisco has finished the Van Ness BRT (and will finish the Central Subway later this year), we think that our recommendations, once implemented, will improve the City’s ability to deliver future construction projects.  We also received a flurry of press articles and TV spots about our report, helping to shine a spotlight on these issues and push elected officials to actually do something about the deficiencies we found.

This year’s Jury has already released a report that builds on ours.  The 2021-22 Jury found that while the City has developed a database to track the performance of contractors on construction projects, City departments have not actively been using this tool.  Their report is already shining a light on this oversight, and hopefully will push the City to actually use the database, making the recommendations we made last year even more impactful.

Does this sound like something you’re interested in doing?  Are you interested in learning in detail about how local government works?  Would you like to hear directly from public officials about how they perform their jobs and why local programs and services are set up the way they are?  Is bringing transparency and improvements to local government important to you?  If so, then you should apply!

There are only a few requirements for being on the Jury:

  1. You must be a U.S. citizen, 18 years of age or older.

  2. You must be a resident of the county to which you are applying for at least one year.

  3. You must have a working knowledge of English. 

  4. While there are no defined times or work requirements while serving on the Jury, you should generally expect to devote at least ten hours per week to Jury work.

As a Civil Grand Juror, you will fulfill your general jury requirements and be paid like ordinary jury service, for a maximum of $75 per week.

Are you interested?  Different counties have different application deadlines for their Jury:

If you’re in a different California county, just do a web search for your county’s Civil Grand Jury to find the application form.  We hope you’ll be inspired to apply!

Simone Manganelli was a member of the 2020-21 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury.  His term expired on June 30, 2021.

Peter HCity government