Grand Jury Handling of Inquiry Criticized

A service provider whose concerns about county mental health contracts were the focus of a grand jury investigation says the San Diego County Grand Jury misrepresented her complaints and failed to contact her in the course of its inquiry.

The grand jury report, issued last week, said there was no basis to charges of improprieties in the award of a contract worth $645,000 to Community Research Foundation to provide residential treatment services to the homeless mentally ill.

The investigation was requested by Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), but the grand jury said it concluded that Joyce Swineheart, chief executive officer of Project Motivate--a competing mental health contractor--was “the catalyst” behind Stirling’s concerns.

Reason Charges Rejected

The report said Stirling had passed information along to investigators indicating that Swineheart had information about demands by county officials for kickbacks from prospective contractors and other improprieties. But the grand jury said the charges had been rejected as groundless by the district attorney’s office and county officials.

The report said the county had “spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars investigating these baseless charges” and recommended that the matter be closed.

However, Swineheart said Wednesday that she had never raised allegations of criminal activity in regard to the mental health contracts and never formally challenged the county’s bidding process. Swineheart said the grand jury never contacted her before issuing its report and that she did not even know a grand jury investigation was being conducted until after the report was released.

“What do you do when a report comes out by an investigative committee such as the grand jury that makes very serious defamatory statements against me when they have not even interviewed me?” she asked.

Explains Her Motivation

Swineheart acknowledged that she had complained about the county’s bidding process, but she insisted that she had never made any allegations of kickbacks or criminal wrongdoing. Her interest, she said, was in calling attention to what she considers shortcomings in the county’s provision of services to the homeless mentally ill.

Edward B. Meyer, grand jury foreman, said the grand jury saw no reason to contact Swineheart during its inquiry, and that its report did not need to be defended.

“It’s based on research that was done by this grand jury,” he said. “There were investigations made by the district attorney’s office--a considerable number of investigations--which we went over.”

Stirling said earlier this week that Swineheart’s complaints were turned over to the grand jury like those of other “whistle blowers” who contact his office, and that he had not investigated the matter himself.