Santa Clara County Grand Jury • 2018-2019 • Agency Response
Response to: Inquiry into the Governance of the Valley Transportation Authority

City of Morgan Hill*

Published: September 04, 2019 3 pages
View Original PDF

Findings and Recommendations 1 findings

F1 Page 1
The VTA Board, currently made up exclusively of elected official from the Santa Clara County, Board of Supervisors, the City of San Jose and the other smaller cities in the County, suffers from: A lack of experience, continuity and leadership; . Inadequate time for the directors to devote to their duties to the VTA Board due to their 0 primary focus on the demands of their elected positions; A lack of engagement on the part of some directors, fostered in part by the committee system, resulting in VTA functioning largely as a staff-driven organization; Domination, in terms of numbers, seniority and influence, by representation of the . Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and the City of San Jose; and Frequent tension between the director's fiduciary duties to VTA and its regional role, on 9 the one hand, and the political demands of their local elected positions, on the other. Response: Morgan Hill agrees with the finding and consistent with recommendation 1c, will deliver a report regarding its view of VTA governance and demographic representation significance by December 31, 2019.
Related Recommendations (3)
R1c
Page 1
As constituent agencies of VTA, each of the cities in the County should prepare and deliver to VTA and the County Board of Supervisors a written report setting forth its views regarding VTA 1 City Manager's Office 17575 Peak Avenue Morgan Hill, CA 95037-4128 Phone: 408-776-7382 Fax: 408-779-1592 CITY OF MORGAN HILL WWW.MORGANHILL.CA.GOV governance, with specific reference to the elements listed in Recommendation 1a. This report should be completed and delivered prior to December 31, 2019. Response: The recommendation has not yet been implemented. The recommendation will be implemented in the future in accordance with the time schedule provided by the Grand Jury; December 31, 2019. Morgan Hill will look critically at the issue of jurisdictional diversity and methods of ensuring proportional, but highly qualified demographic representation.
R1d
Page 2
following the completion of the studies and report specified in
R1e
Page 2
In order to provide more continuity in the leadership of the VTA Board, following the completion of the studies and reports specified in Recommendations 1a, 1b, and 1c, the County of Santa Clara and/or one or more of VTA's other constituent agencies, should propose enabling legislation amending Section 100061 of the California Public Utilities code to provide that the Chairperson of the VTA Board shall be elected for a term of two years rather than one. Response: The recommendation requires further analysis. Morgan Hill agrees to be instrumental in determining the implementation steps and strategy for any agreed upon governance changes that strengthen the demographic representation, quality, term, and expertise of the Governing Board. Until those are known, Morgan Hill is unable to determine whether this recommendation is unwarranted or unreasonable. Morgan Hill 2 23 City Manager's Office 17575 Peak Avenue Morgan Hill, CA 95037-4128 Phone: 408-776-7382 Fax: 408-779-1592 CITY OF MORGAN HILL WWW.MORGANHILL.CA.GOV will have to defer to the findings of further reports and recommendations regarding an improved structure, if made. Sincerely, Christina Turner City Manager 14 3

No Responses Found 2

Government entities assigned to respond to this report. No response documents have been linked in our database.

County of Santa Clara Agency
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority Transit Authority

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.