A slate of individuals qualified for appointment to the county’s Civilian Oversight Commission is expected to be presented in August, according to board documents available Tuesday.
It has been more than four months since the Board of Supervisors laid out a plan to select members for the commission that was established to oversee the Sheriff’s Department.
A consultant has been hired and staffers are looking for office space, but no names have been vetted, according to an update provided by Chief Executive Officer Sachi Hamai.
There was no discussion of the commission at Tuesday’s board meeting, but the status update was provided with other board correspondence on the county’s website.
The plan is for each of the five supervisors to appoint a commissioner. PSI Services LLC, the consultant hired by the board, is working on the criteria to be used to fill the remaining four seats.
Those criteria will be used to identify a list of up to 20 qualified candidates, expected to include recommendations from District Attorney Jackie Lacey, Public Defender Ronald Brown, Alternate Public Defender Janice Fukai and Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge Carolyn Kuhl.
The supervisors’ appointees will then interview those 20 people and pick six to be presented to the board for a vote.
The commission is expected to cost the county just over $1.3 million in ongoing staff salaries, benefits and supplies, plus about $280,000 in start-up costs, including a car for the yet-to-be selected executive director.
Hamai recommended hiring 10 staffers to manage the nine-member commission, including two support staff working in the board’s executive office.
The Office of Inspector General may also need to staff up, depending on how the commission ends up operating and whether, for example, it is willing to rely on existing OIG reports to do its work.
In a March 28 letter to the board, Inspector General Max Huntsman reported that he and his staffers were getting timely access to nearly all of the documents and data they need to oversee the Sheriff’s Department.
Of 187 requests for access to investigative materials, reports and evidence, 182 had been granted. The pending requests included one made March 10 with regard to a homicide investigation and four requests made Jan. 11 related to inmate complaints.
OIG staffers have also been granted access to meetings by the Executive Force Review Committee, Custody Force Review Committee and Critical Incident Review, Huntsman said.
–City News Service