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Oakland is obviously the most recognizable city in Alameda County – which it appears the county’s civil grand jury interprets as meaning Oakland is the center of the Alameda County universe, if not its entirety.
The 2024-25 Alameda County Civil Grand Jury released its final report on Monday, revealing that five of its six investigations pertained exclusively to Oakland. The sixth subject? A countywide agency based in, you guessed it, Oakland.
So if you want to know more about what is and isn’t being done in The Town when it comes to roads, fire safety, parking tickets, homelessness and parks, well this is the report for you.
If you want findings and recommendations relevant to any of the other 13 cities, dozens of unincorporated areas large and small, scores of school and special districts and any countywide department outside of elections, well you’re on your own.
Just how non-Tri-Valley is the report? The word Livermore appears just seven times in its 104 pages. Pleasanton, once (next to the name of a juror who resigned midterm). Dublin, zero.
Criticism on the skewed subject selections is not meant to discount or discredit the effort of this grand jury. It is hard work that they do. Painstaking research, deliberations and reporting done largely out of the goodness of their own hearts (they’re paid a measly $15 per day, plus mileage) to help their communities improve, correct the record, hold governments accountable and preserve the public good.
But a report devoted almost solely to Oakland is an embarrassing misstep – even as you can count me among those praising the results within their investigations into the Oakland city government.
That’s because this is supposed to be the civil grand jury standing for the entire county of 1.6 million residents, not just an Oakland civil grand jury.
I don’t mean for it to come off as rude when I admit I look side-eyed at the jury’s defense.
“While the Grand Jury normally investigates complaints across Alameda County, this year, because of the significance of the issues, we primarily focused on Oakland. As the county seat and its largest municipality, these investigations serve the citizens of Alameda County,” the jury wrote in its foreword, later adding:
“Not only should Oaklanders benefit from a better city, but all of Alameda County benefits from a better Oakland.”
OK. That sounds a bit to me like they were set on only looking at Oakland for whatever reason and tried to frame a justification from there, but sure, I can give the benefit of the doubt to sincerity.
In his letter to Alameda County Superior Court Presiding Judge Thomas Nixon, civil grand jury foreperson Adam Cohen of Oakland said he and his peers assessed 16 complaints before settling on six subjects for full investigations. They also conducted compulsory inspections of Santa Rita Jail (hey, that’s sort of a Dublin shoutout!) and holding facilities in Berkeley, Fremont and Hayward.
The one countywide agency the jury did choose to investigate in 2024-25 captured the attention of many across the region last fall.
In its section “The Registrar of Voters Does an Impressive Job, but More Transparency Needed in Alameda County”, jurors recount their experiences observing the county elections office before and after the Nov. 5 general election. Recall, the office made headlines for being one of the last in California and in all of the United States to certify its election results — on Dec. 3.
“Importantly, there have been no claims of miscalled races, no disputed outcomes, and no major problems with the work of the ROV,” the grand jury noted.
Jurors analyzed all parts of the process that they could: the “Logic & Accuracy” public testing, vote center visits, public ballot dropboxes, automated signature recognition, signature verification, vote-by-mail processing, ballot scanning, the office in Oakland on Election Night, the online video feed and the 1% manual vote tally.
Among the ballot dropboxes the jury observed on Election Day were those in Livermore – the hometown of juror Paul Lynd.
“There was steady voter traffic at all three Livermore locations,” the report stated, noting that ROV staff and county sheriff’s deputies were on hand to watch the boxes and that the sheriff’s officers had been deputized to pick up ballots for the election.
While largely complimentary of ROV staff, the jury came out with 10 recommendations to improve office operations in future elections.
Many address gripes we’ve heard from residents, or even have ourselves as journalists trying to report elections, such as providing more detailed information on estimated pending ballots, publicly update ballot counts daily until certified, more funding for the ROV from the county and stop saying “precincts reported at 100%” when those totals for physical voting centers don’t include loads of unprocessed vote-by-mail ballots.
If you’re interested in the Oakland drama or just looking for a little light reading of investigatory prose, I urge you to dive into the five other topic areas. I gave those sections a professional skim, and they’re fascinating.
The subjects are: “Bad Roads and No Building: Oakland’s Budget Problems Mean No Bonds for the City’s Needs”, “Oakland’s Potholes: A Bumpy Road and Inadequate Oversight”, “Oakland’s Poor Stewardship of Measure Q Funds Jeopardizes its Effectiveness”, “Adding Insult to Injury: Oakland Issues Parking Tickets to Stolen Vehicles” and “Oakland’s Wildfire Preparedness: Good Vegetation Management but Emergency Access Needs Improvement”.
At the end of that fifth section, you’ll find a standalone photo of the golden hills above Lake Del Valle in Livermore (for some reason).
Maybe imagery tied to the new East Bay Wildfire Coalition of Governments mentioned five pages earlier? I don’t know, the caption is non-specific. But hey, that gave “Livermore” appearance No. 7 nevertheless. Yay!…
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
