Posts tagged as “Jennifer Morlok”

2/17/2016 update: From the Lund Report, here:

Partisan animosity broke down in Salem on Presidents’ Day, as Republicans frustrated by the Democratic agenda turned to D.C.-style delaying tactics, forcing House and Senate clerks to read, verbatim, dozens of pages of legalese in each bill before it could come to a vote.

But the Senate still managed to unanimously pass a bipartisan bill that closes a critical gap in medical privacy — forcing university-based health providers to abide by the same confidentiality rules as off-campus providers.

… The demand for the bill was spurred by a notorious case involving the University of Oregon and a student who alleged she’d been raped by members of the basketball team. The woman sued the school, and the university ordered the school’s counseling center to turn over her therapy records to try to disprove her case of emotional distress.

I should note that UO lawyers Doug Park and Sam Hill dispute the claim that UO planned to use Jane Doe’s therapy records to try and disprove her case. They say that they were securing them on request of Jane Doe’s lawyers. However they have never explained why they scanned them into the GC’s computer system, or what procedures they had in place to monitor who then accessed them, or why Counseling Center Director Shelly Kerr would tell Karen Stokes not to stamp the file and keep the GC’s request a secret:

2/4/2016 update: Oregon legislature considers bill making it illegal for university lawyers to do what Park and Hill did

Legislation and testimony etc. here:

This isn’t a hard one:

Meanwhile, UO’s lawyers are getting nasty in their attacks on Stokes and Morlok, the UO Counseling Center employees who blew the whistle and brought the whole matter to state and national attention, and who have alleged that UO responded by retaliating against them:

1/26/2016: UO lawyers use Stokes and Morlok’s OA award against them. Updated below

12/18/2015 update: 

The DOJ will bill the OBPE ~$500 for having to write this order. All because their Director, Charles J. Hill, spent weeks ignoring a public records request for the rules that he claims allow him to keep the public out of the hearing about the $5K fine that the OBPE recommended for UO Counseling Director Shelly Kerr. Then Hill tried to use a petty $2.75 fee to delay release for two more weeks. Ridiculous.

The documents he’s been trying to hide are the OBPE“Notice of Rights and Procedures” and documents showing this was adopted according to state law. Call me slow, but I’m starting to wonder if it was.

We’ll find out, Hill’s got a week to provide the documents at no charge, and I’ll post them when he does. Meanwhile the Oregon Office of Administrative Hearings is telling me that no hearing on the Kerr fine has yet been scheduled.

The DOJ’s full Public Records Order is here:

12/16/2015: Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners uses fees and delays to hide public records

Here’s an email exchange with Charles Hill, the Director of the OBPE, in chronological order. Mr. Hill is trying to argue that he can close the upcoming OBPE hearing in front of an Administrative Law Judge about UO’s appeal of the OBPE’s $5,000 fine against Shelly Kerr, who gave the Jane Doe Counseling Records to UO’s lawyers Doug Park and Sam Hill.

I ask Hill for a copy of the rules that allow the hearing to be closed. He waits for 3 weeks to respond, then tries to use a $2.75 charge to further delay release of the records.

I’ve filed a petition with Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum over his office’s use of fees and delays to frustrate the intent of the Oregon Public Records law, saying:

Dear Mr. Hill –

I’m ccing AAG Michael Kron, the head of the DOJ’s Task Force on public records reform, because your use of delays and fees to frustrate the release of public records is so classic that it might serve as a useful example of how state agencies are manipulating current law.

The emails below show a simple request for your board’s “Notice of Rights and Procedures” and documents showing this was adopted according to state law.

You managed to avoid even responding for 21 days, until I filed a petition with AG Rosenblum. Your response proposes an additional delay of 2 weeks, plus the time needed to send you a check for $2.75.

My request asked for a fee-waiver on the basis of public interest. Given that the UO counseling records incident that led to the hearing at question have been the subject of many news stories in the local, state, and national press, and to proposed and adopted changes in state and federal law, I don’t think there’s much to argue there – the interest certainly exceeds the cost of the $2.75 fee you propose. In any case, if you disagree and do not want to waive the fee, the public records law requires that you explain why you think it is not in the public interest to waive the fee. Your letter doesn’t even try.

Given Mr. Hill’s obstinance, I’m also beginning to wonder if the OPBE (sic) actually has the authority to close these hearings.

The AG’s opinion on his $2.75 fee is due Friday.

On Nov 17, 2015, at 10:18 PM