{"id":8254,"date":"2022-02-18T12:55:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T19:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegonewsdesk.com\/?p=8254"},"modified":"2022-02-18T12:55:38","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T19:55:38","slug":"grand-jury-investigates-sacramento-county-for-allocating-100m-in-covid-aid-to-sheriffs-payroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegonewsdesk.com\/?p=8254","title":{"rendered":"Grand Jury Investigates Sacramento County for Allocating $100M in COVID Aid to Sheriff\u2019s Payroll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Bobbie Wylie<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A grand jury investigation that began in March 2021 as the result of a citizen complaint has found that Sacramento County <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cabandoned responsibility for COVID spending\u201d and \u201cundermined public confidence in government\u201d when, in 2020, county leadership allocated $181 million in federal COVID-19 aid to the county Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.saccourt.ca.gov\/grand-jury\/docs\/reports\/21-22\/sacramento-county-board-of-supervisors-abandons-responsibility-for-covid-spending-021022.pdf\">The report, released Wednesday,<\/a> focused on how Sacramento county spent early COVID-19 relief funding distributed by the Trump administration through a March 2020 law called the CARES Act. The investigation by a Sacramento County grand jury found \u201cthe County of Sacramento conducted no outreach, and made no CARES Act funding plan to support countywide COVID-19 relief activities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In August 2020, a staff report showed Nav Gill, the then chief executive of Sacramento County, had allocated more than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/news\/local\/article244813632.html\">$104 million of $181 million in CARES Act funding<\/a> to the Sheriff\u2019s Office\u2019s payroll. US Treasury guidance for the federal funds stated local governments could use the money to cover public safety and health workers \u201cwhose services are substantially dedicated to mitigating or responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency.\u201d However, the grand jury found that \u201cthese CARES Act funded \u2018public safety\u2019 employees simply continued performing the same duties as they had prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The grand jury called this allocation of federal funds \u201cinconsistent with the widely publicized intent that CARES Act funds be directed to meet the community\u2019s challenges triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d This controversy put pressure on Gill, who<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/news\/local\/article249051685.html\"> resigned from his position<\/a> as county CEO in February 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The grand jury has requested formal responses to the report from the Board of Supervisors and the sheriff within 60 days. The grand jury has also recommended that the Board of Supervisors, county executive and Sheriff\u2019s Office adopt more transparent and specific budget allocation policies for special funding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Photo Cred: Paul Kitakagi Jr.\/ Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Bobbie Wylie A grand jury investigation that began in March 2021 as the result of a citizen complaint has found that Sacramento County \u201cabandoned responsibility for COVID spending\u201d and \u201cundermined public confidence in government\u201d when, in 2020, county leadership allocated $181 million in federal COVID-19 aid to the county Sheriff\u2019s Office. The report,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v16.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Grand Jury Investigates Sacramento County for Allocating $100M in COVID Aid to Sheriff\u2019s Payroll - San Diego News Desk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sandiegonewsdesk.com\/?p=8254\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grand Jury Investigates Sacramento County for Allocating $100M in COVID Aid to Sheriff\u2019s Payroll - San Diego News Desk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Written by Bobbie Wylie A grand jury investigation that began in March 2021 as the result of a citizen complaint has found that Sacramento County \u201cabandoned responsibility for COVID spending\u201d and \u201cundermined public confidence in government\u201d when, in 2020, county leadership allocated $181 million in federal COVID-19 aid to the county Sheriff\u2019s Office. 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