October 22, 2003

(Updated) Motion To Stay Injunction Granted In PUD Ballot Title Language Case

Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.

About thirty minutes ago, I received word from Agnes Sowle, Multnomah County Attorney, that there had indeed been a stay of Judge Haggerty's order of last Friday.

"At 4:22 p.m. yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted ours, the State's and another intervener's Motions to Stay Injunction," said Sowle. "Up until then I had complied with Judge Haggerty's Order. One of those requirements was for his required language to be posted on the Elections Division Homepage."

According to Sowle, that language indeed had been placed on the Elections Division website at about 4:00 PM (just about when Jack Bogdanski said he saw it) Tuesday.

"When I received the call from the Ninth Circuit," Sowle explained, "we were relieved from any requirement to follow the injunction." And so the language only just placed on the Elections website was removed.

"We were concerned that by posting it as required by Judge Haggerty," Sowle concluded, "we were impermissibly interfering with an election that was in progress."

That last bit would seem to offer a glimpse into what the County may have argued to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. I haven't yet (and likely won't, unless someone posts it somewhere) seen any of the actual paperwork.

But we can all stop looking for the website notice, and we can forget about seeing newspaper ads starting Thursday.

October 22, 2003

Update

Should have read The Oregonian before printing that last paragraph:

Tuesday's decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco means a challenge of Haggerty's ruling won't be decided until after the election.
It also means almost all of the notices Haggerty ordered will not be issued, although at least one ad about the measure's wording will appear Thursday in The Oregonian.

So I guess the order the County did place for that day is going to go through. But, more important is the word about the timeframe for the rest of the process. While the underlying issue regarding the permissibility of the state's requirement that the "three percent warning" be placed in the ballot titles of property rax measures will be decided at some point, it doesn't look like it will happen in time to have an impact on how this particular election plays out. According to the paper, the appeals court won't take it up until November 18.

The article also confirms something posted above:

Attorneys for the county and state, as well as opponents of the measure, argued that the ruling interfered with an election that was in progress and improperly reviewed an issue that had already been addressed by a state court judge.

Attorneys for the other side, however, assert that staying the order, and thereby allowing misleading information to continue impacting the voting public, causes "irreparable harm." Dan Meek, attirney for one of the plaintiffs in the case says he will ask to have this schedule accelerated.

Posted at 09:40 AM | PermalinkComments (0) | TrackBacks (3)
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    If you've been following the court action with me on the Multnomah County PUD election, here's the latest: The Ninth Circuit has stayed Judge Haggerty's preliminary injunction in an unpublished order. The Oregonian reports here; Portland Communique rep...

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  3. Oh, won't you stay... on 23 Oct 2003

    If you've been following the court action with me on the Multnomah County PUD election, here's the latest: The Ninth Circuit has stayed Judge Haggerty's preliminary injunction in an unpublished order. The Oregonian reports here; Portland Communique rep...