Illinois Valley News

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger (IVN photo)

As part of Oregon Attorney General John Kroger“s government transparency initiative, he and Dept. of Justice staff members met with media representatives and members of the public at the Medford Library on Thursday evening, June 10.

The meeting, the sixth in a series at locations throughout the state, was held to receive testimony from Oregonians about the effectiveness of open meeting and public record laws.

The meeting, attended by approximately 25 persons, lasted some 90 minutes.

Kroger outlined the goals of his initiative, as well as some of the steps his office already has taken to promote open and transparent government. The final phase will be to propose changes to the Legislature in 2011.

“People in Oregon want to have a very transparent government,“ said Kroger. “They want to know how their tax dollars are being spent and if there are mistakes they want to know about that.“

Among challenges to information access cited by Kroger are the more than 450 exemptions “sprinkled“ throughout the statute books. Additionally, he noted the subjective definition of the legal requirement that agencies respond to public record requests in a “reasonable“ amount of time.

What seems reasonable to government, he said, might not seem reasonable to the citizen seeking information.

Another issue the attorney general identified during his recent meetings is the cost of fees imposed to complete information requests.

Medford Mail Tribune publisher Grady Singletary noted that gathering the information necessary to keep citizens informed has become a challenge for newspapers.

“It“s troubling for us and should be troubling for you,“ he said. “It“s information that you need to know, and we need to provide it to you in a timely fashion.“

Some steps that the AG“s office has taken, Kroger said, are to put the Oregon public meeting law manual online at no charge; create a simplified “Citizens Guide“ which is an overview of the law; and establish a “transparency counsel“ position.

One problematic area identified by audience member Jack Duggan is publication of minutes by governing bodies and agencies. It was noted that minutes often are posted long after the meeting in question and in summary form, which “(is) neither complete nor accurate.“

“Agencies should post draft minutes subject to approval,“ Duggan said. He noted an instance in which entire testimonies were eliminated from the final minutes of a governing body.

“How can ... members of the media see what is going on if those minutes are incomplete““ Duggan asked.

“There may be occasions where a public body intentionally has bad minutes because they don“t want to put some information out there,“ Kroger replied. “But I think it“s much more common that we have volunteer minute takers at a lot of these public bodies and they really don“t have the training to know what should be included in minutes.“

He said that one idea is to provide education for such volunteers on public boards.

“It takes a while to get minutes drafted and posted and approved,“ Kroger said. “But in the digital age ... it“s not that difficult to record a meeting and post it on the Website of the public body.“

Allen Baker, from Ashland, related his experience in seeking information about employee salaries and benefits for city workers. After much effort and “back and forth“ with city hall, Baker was required to pay almost $300 for information that he felt should be much more accessible.

“City records of something as important as salaries should be kept in such a way that they are readily available to citizens to look at,“ Baker said. He credits his eventual success to his experience in journalism, work on open government in Alaska, and access to the public records law manual.

“I think the ordinary citizen would have been frustrated by the whole process,“ observed Baker.

He noted that the city of Ashland spent $51,000 on a comparative study of salaries in other municipalities. If that information was available online, he said, municipalities and other agencies could save a lot of money.

With respect to training public employees on changes in the law, Barbara Christiansen, city recorder for Ashland, noted that cities and other agencies haven“t the funding to send workers to trainings to keep current.

“We need you to come to us,“ Christiansen told the attorney general.

Steve Rich, legal counsel for Josephine County, noted that with respect to public meeting law, executive sessions (meetings closed to the public) and media, the current state of the law required entities to make “ad hoc“ decisions about who fits the definition of media.

“The reality has outgrown that word in the statute,“ Kroger responded.

“We may have to recalibrate, not standards for media,“ he said, “but definition of who gets to enter a meeting.“ As with the issue of complete minute-taking, Kroger opined that a certification course could be required for those who want to attend certain meetings.

“We have cities all over the state trying to scramble around and figure out what the responsible way to handle this is,“ he said. “I think for better or for worse we will have to tackle this and give better guidance.“

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