San Joaquin County Grand Jury • 2020-2021

Independent Special Districts Transparency “Not Found”*

Published: August 11, 2021 48 pages
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Findings and Recommendations 21 findings

F1
1 SB 929. Not all elements of SB 929 compliance are present on the district website, negatively
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
1 By March 31, 2022, comply with SB 929. Provide proof of exemption when relevant.
F2
1 districts, making it difficult for the public to find information about those districts. There is no comprehensive central directory from which the public can access information
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
1 (SJ-IS) to create a webpage on the LAFCO website that lists all independent special districts within the boundaries of the county and provide a link to a standard summary page for each district. By March 31, 2022, on the summary webpage for each district, LAFCO provide at least the
F3
1 There is no easy access from the county website to the websites of independent special districts, making it difficult for the public to find information about those districts.
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
1 (SJ-IS) to create a webpage on the LAFCO website that lists all independent special districts within the boundaries of the county and provide a link to a standard summary page for each district. By March 31, 2022, on the summary webpage for each district, LAFCO provide at least the
F4
1 easily accessible to the public. The brief financial summaries derived from the audits by the Auditor-Controller's Office are
Related Recommendations (1)
R4
1 special district audits to be submitted in an electronic form. By December 31, 2021, make all electronic independent special district audits going forward
F5
1 quality services that can be shared with independent special districts. The county's robust implementation of its cyber strategy would be difficult for most
Related Recommendations (1)
R5
1 available services, benefits, costs, and sample MOUs, and distribute to all independent special districts. By March 31, 2022, the San Joaquin County Information Systems Division, in conjunction
F1.1
SB 929. Not all elements of SB 929 compliance are present on the district website, negatively
No recommendations for this finding
F1.2
impacting public transparency. Imprecise links to the State Controller's Office website for financial transactions and board
No recommendations for this finding
F1.3
compensation make the website harder to use. The financial transactions on the State Controller's Office website do not provide an easily
No recommendations for this finding
F1.4
understood picture of the district's finances. The San Joaquin County Auditor-Controller's Office has audits and financial summaries for
No recommendations for this finding
F1.5
most districts that provide a more complete picture of the finances.
No recommendations for this finding
F1.6
The district could achieve higher levels of functionality and security on its website by leveraging the IS services of the county or other entity that has focused software for special districts.
No recommendations for this finding
F2.1
districts, making it difficult for the public to find information about those districts. There is no comprehensive central directory from which the public can access information
No recommendations for this finding
F2.2
on their independent special districts, making such information difficult to find. The public would benefit from the addition of the following to the LAFCO website
No recommendations for this finding
F2.3
District website link; Link to latest Municipal Service Review; Link to latest Sphere of Influence study; Link to the district map (usually found on the county GIS); • Date of agency formation; and Links to information about each Independent Special District as available from county departments.
No recommendations for this finding
F3.1
There is no easy access from the county website to the websites of independent special districts, making it difficult for the public to find information about those districts.
No recommendations for this finding
F3.2
County departments have information on independent special districts that is difficult for the public to access.
No recommendations for this finding
F4.1
easily accessible to the public. The brief financial summaries derived from the audits by the Auditor-Controller's Office are
No recommendations for this finding
F4.2
not easily accessible to the public. The Auditor-Controller's Office financial summaries provide a clearer picture of a district's
No recommendations for this finding
F4.3
finances than that which is found on the State Controller's Office site.
No recommendations for this finding
F5.1
quality services that can be shared with independent special districts. The county's robust implementation of its cyber strategy would be difficult for most
No recommendations for this finding
F5.2
independent special districts to duplicate.
No recommendations for this finding

Conclusions 35

* 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.