A scathing Civil Grand Jury report released Monday derides the
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority as unresponsive and
unaccountable to the public, disobedient to its own policies, and
generally dishonest.
A scathing Civil Grand Jury report released Monday derides the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority as unresponsive and unaccountable to the public, disobedient to its own policies, and generally dishonest.
“The more one learns about how the VTA executes its mission, the lower the confidence level in the board’s ability to manage the agency,” reads a line in the summary of the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury report entitled “Taking the public for a ride.”
VTA spokeswoman Jennie Loft said the report contains nothing new, is full of factual errors, and its criticisms echo those heard during the November 2008 election season, when the agency sponsored three ballot measures that voters approved.
“The report is filled with restatements from anti-VTA and anti-BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) rhetoric, and that rhetoric was rejected by the voters in November,” Loft said. “If you look through the report you see opinions about the VTA or opinions about BART that are not based on fact.”
The three ballot measures provided for an eighth-cent sales tax to extend BART, and to approve the agency’s long-range transportation plan.
The report released Monday also relies on previous reports that were critical of the VTA, including a 2003-2004 Civil Grand Jury report, a 2007 study by private consultant the Hay Group, and a July 2008 report by the California State Auditor. Loft said the VTA has worked on implementing some of the recommendations made in those reports, chief of which is that the VTA board’s advisory committees should be more involved with staff and board members.
The latest report released Monday specifically questions the agency’s use of the Citizens Advisory Committee, a 16-member panel of appointed citizens that is charged with reviewing the agency’s expenditures and conducting independent audit reports. The report says Measure A, a half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements approved by voters in 2000, created a Citizens Watchdog Committee, and the board assigned this role to the existing CAC.
However, the report says, the CWC is not independent of the VTA board as a true “watchdog” should be. It says its members are approved by the board and not by a third-party as other citizen oversight bodies are in other transportation agencies in California. Plus, those members consist of former board and staff members.
“The very nature of an ‘independent watchdog committee’ is to ‘oversee’ actions of the board for the citizens of Santa Clara County,” says the report.
More broadly, the report criticizes the relationship between the VTA board and its staff, complaining that staff has too much influence in policy decisions. It says in producing board meeting agendas, the staff often floods the directors with stacks of documents sometimes hundreds of pages thick, often leaving them little time to process all the information.
Actions recommended by “Taking the public for a ride” include changing VTA bylaws so that Measure A CWC members are appointed by an independent third party; prohibiting former elected officials from sitting on the CAC; and allowing the CWC to have its own staff that does not double as VTA staff. It also says the VTA board should encourage the CWC to establish its own priorities; and should prepare its own meeting agendas instead of directing staff to do so.
VTA board members and local representatives Don Gage and Greg Sellers did not immediately respond to phone calls requesting comment.
Civil Grand Jury foreman Don Kawashima also did not immediately respond to a phone call requesting comment.
