SAN DIEGO — Days after another man died in a San Diego County jail and became at least the eighth person to die in custody this year, the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to boost the authority of the sheriff’s civilian oversight board.

By a 4-0 vote, the board approved Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe’s plan to broaden the authority of the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, or CLERB, the independent office in charge of monitoring the Sheriff’s Office and Probation Department.

The unanimous decision came hours after Sheriff Kelly A. Martinez issued a public statement opposing the effort and saying without evidence that the proposed changes were being pushed by activists intent on doing away with jails.

“I know that there is a movement to abolish all jails,” the sheriff’s statement said. “I believe much of the requested oversight and criticisms of our system are spurred by this movement. There is an active narrative that we are not making changes or improving our system.

“This is a false narrative,” Martinez said.

In introducing her plan just before the deliberation, Montgomery Steppe said she was disheartened and disappointed by the sheriff’s claim.

“CLERB is not anti-law enforcement,” she said. “That is not what CLERB is. In my six years as an elected official, I have never advocated for (abolishing jails).”

Under the plan approved Tuesday, staff will return to supervisors early next year with draft language to amend the county ordinance to award the review board the power to investigate jail medical staff and contractors in cases where people die in custody.

It would also add a requirement that CLERB investigations into allegations of misconduct by deputies and probation officers be completed within one year, and it would direct the oversight body to consider the level of staffing on duty at the time of any medical emergency during its reviews.

Inadequate healthcare staffing has been repeatedly cited as a serious problem in local jails.

The new plan also calls on the review board to investigate all in-custody deaths — even those determined by the Medical Examiner’s Office to be from natural causes — and to prioritize death cases over all other investigations.

Once the rules are amended, county officials will begin meet-and-confer sessions with the labor unions that represent jail medical employees.

Board Vice Chair Terra Lawson-Remer credited the review board for its work but said more work lies ahead. She also praised Martinez for the changes she has implemented since being sworn in early last year but noted the county is in charge of protecting people in custody.

“There’s a lot of tragedies, but this is one we are responsible for,” she said of the jail deaths. “I just know we have to do better.”

The policy changes approved by the Board of Supervisors represent the first significant reforms imposed on the Sheriff’s Office in years.

The sheriff said the new powers awarded to the review board would complicate the “already burdensome oversight” and make it more difficult to hire doctors, nurses and other healthcare employees and contractors.

“Medical and mental healthcare professionals have professional standards and review boards that are among the most stringent,” Martinez said in her statement. “We have policies and procedures, as well as state and federal laws, that hold us all accountable.”

In urging supervisors to approve the changes, CLERB Executive Officer Brett Kalina noted that the San Diego County oversight board is one of the oldest such bodies in the country.

Even so, its budgets over the past 30 years have totaled less than what taxpayers have spent on lawsuits filed by families of people who died in jail over just the past few years, he said.

“We have a long history of working with the sheriff and the chief of probation,” Kalina said. “When we reduce these deaths and the numbers go down, it actually saves the county money down the road.”

The proposal drew support Tuesday from dozens of members of the public, including relatives of people who died in sheriff’s custody and people who turn out every week to criticize county supervisors on nearly every item on the agenda.

“It is past time for CLERB to investigate all of those involved in deaths in our jails,” county resident Mary Niez testified. “Going to jail and receiving subpar medical attention should not be a death sentence.”

Denise Settles, whose brother-in-law died in San Diego County jail two years ago, said reforms were needed because CLERB has no jurisdiction over the mental health providers who were responsible for treating Matthew Settles.

“His case has been deemed strictly medical,” she told the board. “We deserve to know why he was effectively given a death sentence, even though he was never convicted of a crime.”

Montgomery Steppe based several of the CLERB changes on the findings of a 2022 state audit of the San Diego Sheriff’s Office, a scathing report that identified 185 in-custody deaths between 2006 and 2020. State auditors also noted repeated violations of sheriff’s rules and said many had led to deaths that could have been avoided.

The state report was initiated after a six-month investigation by The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2019 that found San Diego had the highest jail-mortality rate among all large California counties, with 140 deaths in the prior 10 years. Many of those were due to improper medical and mental health care.

Former CLERB executive officer Paul Parker said the package proposed by Montgomery Steppe was a significant improvement, but he added that jurisdiction over jail medical operations should not be limited to death cases.

He decried the sheriff’s claim that advocates of the reforms want to abolish jails.

“Strengthened oversight is a tool to help, not hinder or be a threat to the sheriff,” said Parker, who quit last March in frustration over what he saw as a lack of progress in jail improvements.

“These steps address what has been a black eye on San Diego County that has gone publicly unaddressed for far too long,” he said. “These proposals may go a long way to transform that black eye into the gold standard for civilian oversight of deaths in custody.”

Late last month, the San Diego Sheriff’s Office reported that a 66-year-old man at the George Bailey Detention Facility died at a local hospital after becoming ill. He had been extradited from El Salvador in September on suspicion of committing a murder in Emerald Hills in 1991.

The CLERB is scheduled to consider the planned reforms at its meeting next week.

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