2/17/2015: The Oregonian reports a Republican legislator has introduced a PR reform bill:
Parrish also plans to introduce a bill that would require public officials to comply with public records requests faster and at a lower cost.
The bill, which is still being drafted, comes in response to requests by The Oregonian/OregonLive for Hayes’ emails. Her attorney rejected the request. Rosenblum last Thursday ordered Hayes to turn over any emails on her personal account related to state business.
2/15/2015: Dan Lucas of the Oregon Catalyst blog explains how Oregon’s broken enforcement of its public records law allowed Kitzhaber to delay release of public records until after the election. We don’t need a new law, we just need the Oregon AG to enforce the one we’ve got. The ineffectual Oregon Government Ethics Commission also gets its due.
The real problem with open records in Oregon is that nothing happens to you if you don’t obey them. It doesn’t sound like Parrish intends to fix that (but I’m going to write her anyway), because her motivation seems to be scoring political points with the GOP.