You can’t hide incompetence forever, apparently. The chronic mismanagement of the Erie County Sheriff’s Office crashed the gates of public consciousness last week as most of the 75 people attending a public hearing supported creating a panel to monitor the operations of Erie County’s jails and offer advice to Sheriff Timothy B. Howard.

That, alone, is good news. The Sheriff’s Office has been indifferently managed for years and desperately needs overlay of oversight. Now the public is pushing for it. The panel, which seems to be well conceived, should be approved.

The evidence of the need goes back years, to the days when Howard and then-County Executive Chris Collins fought the federal Justice Department’s concerns over the number of suicides in the Erie County Holding Center. They lost, but conditions remain intolerable.

Here’s a clue: Management is so bad that a citizens group went to court to force Howard to report jail incidents accurately. They won. A judge last fall saw the merit of issuing an order to require the sheriff to do his job.

That ruling is a critical feature of the landscape surrounding this proposal. If a judge agreed that a court order was necessary to make the sheriff measure up to standards, it’s hardly unreasonable to believe that panel would be useful to the public, which pays for the jails’ operations and the lawsuits their mismanagement is bound to instigate.

That lawsuit arose out of a series of problems that occurred in 2017 at the county’s two jails, the worst of which was the death of an inmate that the State Commission of Correction called a homicide committed by jailers. Richard A. Metcalf Jr., had been strangled, it said, when jail deputies knotted the strings of a spit mask around his neck. Yet, in their reports to Albany, jail staff withheld mention of the spit mask or any other restraint devices.

That’s called a coverup.

Other troubling actions in 2017 included:

• Suicide attempts: The Buffalo News reported that jail officials were describing inmate suicide attempts as “individual inmate disturbances,” thus inappropriately avoiding the need for an automatic report to the Commission of Correction. That’s also called a coverup.

• Staff at the Correctional Facility in Alden told the commission an inmate was hospitalized after being hurt in an accidental fall when, in fact, he had been beaten unconscious by another inmate against whom he had sought — but did not receive — protective custody. That cover-up continued even after the attacker was charged, as the Correctional Facility staff never corrected their false report.

• The Commission of Correction found that the Holding Center had failed to officially report the mistaken release of an inmate.

Twenty-four inmates have died since Howard became sheriff in 2006. We don’t know if mismanagement there stems from a lack of interest or insufficient skill for what is, no doubt, a complex and difficult job. But what is obvious is that something different needs to happen.

The proposed creation of the Erie County Corrections Specialist Advisory Board is at least a first step. It would be staffed by 11 volunteers whose task would be to examine some of the jails’ most urgent issues, offer advice to Howard and his team — and their successors — and provide a public forum for citizens to air their concerns.

The panel would have potential muscle, as it could ask the Legislature to use its subpoena power to gather information. The Legislature’s willingness to comply would depend on its membership and commitment to openness at the jails, but that prospect holds the greatest power for implementing important changes.

Under the legislation, the panel’s membership would be broad, including appointments by the sheriff, the Legislature, the county executive and the leaders of the probation and mental health departments, both of whom report to the county executive. Both parties and a variety of interests, professional and social, would be represented.

It’s a fair proposal that the Legislature and County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz should approve. It will be useful no matter who is sheriff, but today, it is essential.