In something of a Hail Mary move in the hope of finding some way to rebuild the crumbling support for the embattled Chief of LA County Probation, Donald Blevins, the Probation Commission—which meets Wednesday— is scheduled to vote to “affirm confidence in Chief Donald Blevins’ management of the department.”
(Bizarrely enough, Commissioner Steve Gores, who is one of the commissioners who will be bringing forth this motion, happens to be employed by the Probation Department, meaning he will be introducing this motion to affirm confidence in his boss, which strikes me as something of a conflict of interest. But whatever.)
This sort of vote is, to say the least, highly unusual. Yet the fact that Blevins has taken some serious political hits, is without question.
If you’ll remember, last month, the Chief, who has only been on the job a little over a year, was slammed with a nearly unprecedented—and very public—vote of no confidence by all of the main unions that represent Probation’s employees.
And there is strong grumbling out of the offices of at least two of the five Supervisors about whether Blevins has shown he is up to the task of getting the still deeply troubled Probation Department—particularly the juvenile segment of the agency— back on track enough to, say, avoid the Department of Justice losing patience and stepping in with a federal consent decree. All it would take is for one more Supervisor to sign on with the Blevins contras and his days as chief could be numbered.
In many ways it is perplexing that the target of all this ire should be Blevins. While he is not without his flaws, he is also a smart and seasoned pro who knows what successful programs ought to look like—unlike his predecessor Robert Taylor, whose mismanagement was one of the elements that broke the agency in the first place.
On the other hand, little substantive progress appears to have been made in correcting the panoply of serious problems that plague the county’s juvenile probation camps—a worrisome fact that is reflected in the reports from the federal monitors tasked with overseeing the improvements, and in the anecdotal accounts of the volunteers and others who come in and out of the camps.
if the Probation Commission does indeed give Blevins a vote of confidence, it has only symbolic value. Still whatever theater may emerge from the meeting will be interesting to note.
So stay tuned. The ending of this story is far from certain.
PS: I just took a quick glance at the other agenda items on the Commission’s list, several of which make one want to bang one’s head repeatedly against a hard surface.
For instance there is this: Corrective Action Plan for the arsenic in the drinking water at Challenger camps.
Arsenic?
Turns out, the drinking water at the Challenger camps-–which houses more than 300 kids—showed roughly seven times the recommended maximum threshold, according to a report that came out last month.
The Commissioners also want to know why the library program has been discontinued at the Challenger camps.
Good question. It was the Challenger camps that were the object of a monster class action lawsuit for failing to even minimally educate many of their charges. So, yes, why is the library program being discontinued at this arsenic-ridden facility?—-since that program was specifically ONE OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE NOVEMBER 4, 2010 COURT SETTLEMENT (!!!).
(Paging the ACLU.)
As I said: stay tuned.