Update: Gordon Friedman reports in the SJ that Gov. Kate Brown will talk about the audit and her plans for transparency at 1:30 tomorrow in HR 3: https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2015I1/Committees/JLAUD/2015-11-18-13-30/Agenda Meanwhile Michael Kron’s DOJ public records task force is meeting from 1-3 in the Governor’s Conference Room: http://www.doj.state.or.us/public_records/Pages/task_force.aspx And Nick Budnick reports in the Oregonian…
Posts tagged as “Public Records”
10/29/2015:
This morning I drove up to Salem for the first meeting of this task force. I’m still a little bitter that Michael Kron didn’t add a slot for “Obsessed public records blogger” and appoint me, but with Les Zaitz and Jeb Bladine, and what seems to be a lot of support from AG Ellen Rosenblum and Governor Kate Brown, it seems pretty clear that this group will come up with a substantial bit of legislation for fixing some of the weaknesses in Oregon’s Public Records Law.
I did hear a few of the usual complaints from some members of the task force and the audience about the “burden of public records compliance”. It’s funny how agencies that spend far more on PR flacks tasked with making the boss look good than they do on real transparency can say that with a straight face.
There’s still plenty of risk that the lobbyists and legislators will figure out how to use this as an opportunity to weaken our already weak law, and I still think the first thing to do would be for the AG to write some hard-hitting PR opinions, and set a good example for the county DAs. But this is obviously a good faith effort to get it right, with lots of political support.
Speaking of District Attorneys, one simple interim step would be for the DOJ to start collecting and posting the DA’s decisions on public records petitions. From what I’ve seen, DA compliance with the PR law is spotty.
10/21/2015: AG to try again on public records reform – or more stalling?
involving the Lane County DA or the Eugene PD. Seems pretty broad: Arnold’s website is here.
Under Dave Hubin UO’s Public Records Office refused to give fee waivers to journalists – even UO student journalists. Oregon public records law requires an explanation for fee waiver denials. Hubin and PR Officer Lisa Thornton ignored that law. Now Daily Emerald reporter Noah McGraw has written a very good report…
Taking out the mirror requests, it looks like a bit less than one PR request per day. Most are pretty simple requests for a contract or some such. The office has a $300K budget: How can they be this far behind? It’s almost as if they’re not really trying. Full log…
They want to fire her for cause. No $400K buyout. InsideHigherEd has the latest news on UIUC Chancellor Phyllis Wise here.
Governor Kate Brown has just signed Senate Bill 9, calling for audits of state agency compliance with Oregon’s Public Records law. Good for her. Except for a brief period under President Lariviere, UO’s public records office has been notorious for its use of fees, delays, and redactions to frustrate the intent of…
In their editorial on Governor Kate Brown’s inaugural address, here: … Brown also promised to make Oregon’s public records more easily and quickly available to the news media and to the public. That’s an appropriate reaction to the Kitzhaber administration’s stonewalling on public records requests for documents pertaining to the…
2/13/2015 update: Phil Knight gave Kitz a $250K campaign contribution last year, so he’s still got a bit of a debt to work off, and as UO President he’d have plenty of chances. Seems crazy, but remember UO was the state’s consolation prize to Frohnmayer, after his run for governor…
Here: Which means she is subject to the public records and meeting law. And if Ms Hayes is a public body, then certainly UO Board of Trustees Chair Chuck Lillis is. In the past UO has used an earlier DOJ opinion claiming that an individual cannot be a “public body”…
1/22/2015 Presidential Archives records release investigation update: FOR INTERNAL-LIBRARY USE ONLY Dear Library staff, faculty, administrators, As you read in President Coltrane’s recent message, we have recently learned that significant numbers of archived records have been released, despite the fact that some of these records contained confidential, private, and sensitive…
Oregon has a law on government transparency: SB 2500, passed in 2009. State agencies are required to post a bunch of info, including expenditures, on the state transparency webpage here. For example, Oregon State University spent a fair amount on Legal Services: What about UO? Well, UO has stopped reporting Legal Services…
1/7/2015 update: Josephine Woolington has more in the RG on the Eugene School Board’s decision to hire HLGR to help them hide these public records: Said school board Chairman Jim Torrey on Wednesday: “In this case, we believe our decision to bring legal action was in the best interest of…
They’ve been hoping that opinions issued by Lane County DA Alex Gardner and Associate DA Patty Perlow would allow them to redact UO documents en masse, instead of having to explain what they were hiding. But the Oregon Court of Appeals has just rejected that Gardner and Perlow interpretation of…
11/30/2014: Dave Hubin and Doug Park still hiding docs on GTFF bargaining Here’s a page of the invoices from the faculty union bargaining. Heavily redacted, but at least Gottfredson would release them. UO has become even less transparent under Coltrane: When the UO administration wants the public to know things that make themselves…