The Government Transparency Initiative

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger announced plans this week for a significant overhaul of
Oregon's Public Records Law with the goal of creating more open and transparent government. According to the Oregonian, "the proposals, which now go to the legislature, stem from growing concerns from news organizations, watchdog groups and others that obtaining documents and other materials from public agencies was becoming increasingly difficult and expensive."

Among the proposals that I find particularly interesting are the following:

Repeal of many of the 400+ exemptions to the law including the disciplinary records of senior managers not represented by unions. Currently the personnel records of all public employees are exempt from public examination.

Reports of waste, fraud and abuse would no longer be exempt from public examination once investigations were complete.

Stricter deadlines for agencies to respond to public records requests from journalists or other members of the public. More reasonable limits on what agencies can charge for making those records available.

A requirement that all governments (including local school boards) digitally record their meetings and that those recording be made available to the public within seven days.

A requirement that all executive sessions be recorded. Since executive sessions deal with legally protected information, those recordings would not be available to the public but recording them would help to insure that the executive session does not stray into topics that should be discussed and acted upon in an open meeting.

I applaud AG Kroger's proposals and wish he would also tackle the Public Meetings Law. We need legal updates that specify how meetings are to be noticed and we need better enforcement of the law's provisions.