The following updates were provided by Riverside County First District Supervisor Kevin Jeffries.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Your county government employs roughly 25,000 people to serve nearly 2.5 million residents. Some of the employee positions include sheriff deputies, code officers, social workers, doctors, nurses, veterinarians, attorneys, auditors, custodians, maintenance and transportation laborers, accountants, and just about every other job you can think of for this massive operation.
The county also has lots of contracts with non-profits and local businesses for various services, including foster care homes, software providers, grant writing, community center programs, emergency shelters, juvenile justice programs, architects, engineers, and of course firefighting services through our Cal Fire contract and ambulances via American Medical Response.
These contracts provide valuable services that sometimes are major cost savers for taxpayers and other times are just more specialized than our existing staff is typically able to handle (e.g. our Planning Department has suffered a 63% employee turnover rate in two years, so we must retain outside help to keep things moving).
Unfortunately, the heavy hand of our State Legislature is pushing a bill through to set up a series of new hoops and bureaucratic red tape to make it much more difficult for cities and counties to use non-profits and local businesses.
While some big-boy contractors could handle the new paperwork and reporting requirements, many of our contracts are given to small non-profits for whom this would be a very heavy burden. And while the goal in Sacramento is to staff all these functions with new government employees, the reality is that if the costs go up and the number of vendors/non-profits willing to participate goes down, some of these services might be at risk going forward. Assembly Bill 2557 has already passed the Assembly and is now moving through the Senate.
Holy Freeway!
Most of our local state-owned freeways (10, 15, 91, 60 & 215) simply serve as parking lots during the heavy commuter hours. Those extended drives serve as a great time to get your knitting and/or homework done (just kidding).
Our office has been receiving a significant number of calls and emails about one freeway that is now well known for its extensive potholes and deteriorating condition – that being the 215 between Perris and Riverside. The state of this state-owned freeway is embarrassingly bad. And since Caltrans is no longer in the business of building or expanding freeways, the least they could do is better maintain what they have!
If you are so inclined, you can email Caltrans with a Customer Service Request (CSR) for any number of concerns, including obstacles on the roadway, potholes, landscape issues, signage, graffiti, homeless encampments, etc. CSRs can be submitted at: https://csr.dot.ca.gov.
Endless Litigation
For those of you who have worked in big government or a big business, you likely already know that litigation (aka lawsuits) is a routine part of being in business. We are a society that rushes to court, particularly if a target is perceived to have “deep pockets.” Now before you write me a nasty gram, I am neither a defender of big business nor big government. Nor would I deny someone the right to be compensated for actual harm and injury. But in the case of your Riverside County government – the legal payout numbers are staggering and frustrating.
Over a 10-year period (7/1/14 to 6/10/24), the total of all jury and settlement payouts (excluding legal fees) exceeded $241 million! It’s an amount that makes your blood boil. Who were the top departments to be litigated over the 10-year period? Sheriff at $99,633,565, Social Services $57,466,570, Hospital/Health System $38,523,859, and the Transportation Agency $20,147,978.
The top two peak payout years were 2014/15 ($41million) and 2018/19 ($36million). The good news for taxpayers is that with internal reforms and accountability pushed by the board – the litigation awards and settlements have generally been decreasing each year ($7 million in 2021/22 and $4.5 million in 2022/23). If this trend holds, the taxpayers of this county will be the winners, as your hard-earned tax dollars can instead be spent providing actual services instead of attorneys.
Can We Do Better?
Every major election cycle, the Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV) has to roll out a massive county-wide election network so that over one million voters in Riverside County can easily cast their votes. The pre-planning and logistics to make this all happen is significant.
Then Election Day arrives, and the vote counting begins, which is immediately followed by questions. Sometimes they come from candidates and some from election integrity groups. Many times, the questions are valid. Why did my neighbor receive three ballots? Why is a person who moved out of state receiving our ballots? Why do ballots cast by our military men and women get disqualified if they are late? We may not like the answers sometimes, but at least they are explained, and often with improvements sought.
The next level of questions dives into technical issues involving voting machine technology, signature verification for mailed ballots, delivery issues involving the United States Post Office, chain of custody concerns for ballots, or requiring government-issued IDs to vote.
Unfortunately, many of these issues (including IDs at the ballot box) are governed by state or federal law, not the county. Regardless of which political party you identify with, or which candidate you support, you, the voters need to have a reasonable level of confidence that your elections are being held fairly, honestly, and accurately.
The board of supervisors has been repeatedly asked to not accept the certification of several recent elections and place those election outcomes on hold (impacting judges, congressional, and school board candidates, to name a few). This is based on reports that it is possible, perhaps even likely, that some people are voting in on our elections that should not be. Doing so is a crime. But unless it is proven to be happening on a massive enough scale in our local communities and districts to change the outcome of an election, the thought of upending or suspending our right to vote scares the heck out of me.
We absolutely need to continue to improve the quality of our voter rolls and protect the integrity of our vote counting, but in the absence of any actual evidence of organized fraud or vote tampering, we must also protect and respect the results of our elections and our right to decide who represents us in our fragile Republic.
As always, I welcome your comments and feedback as to how the county can do better. I read just about every single email and respond back to many.
