March 12, 2004
'Oregonian' On Public Meetings Law
Fanning The Flames
Today's edition of The Oregonian presents an article, provides some background and offers a Q&A on Oregon's public meetings law:
Q: What is a public meeting?
A: The public is allowed to attend anytime the quorum of a governing body meets to make or deliberate toward a decision on any matter or to gather information. Decisions must be made in public, and secret ballots are prohibited.
Unfortunately, it doesn't delve much more deeply than this, nor does the historical background.
And the longer article offers mostly a sense of how the law can and has been violated in the past, providing only three paragraphs to (a small part of) the County's arguments as to how it did not violate the law -- and even that appears only after five opening paragraphs which build to give the sense (without ever simply coming out and saying it) that there's no way the County could be in the right.
All of which is likely to lead to further confusion and prompt more accusations that Multnomah County violated this law, rather than a deeper understanding of the dispute.
While we understand that the editorial board of The Oregonian has consistently berated the Commissioners involved in the same-sex marriage license process, it would be nice if the paper wouldn't let that stand in the way of properly and expansively informing its readers in a way that illuminates the public meetings law as it relates to the legal positions in this case.
We've made previous attempts at discussing the public meetings law, but since The Oregonian has decided to commit the sin of omission, we feel the need to take another look.
One of the most important aspects of the public meetings law as it relates to the current situation is ORS 192.610, which defines various terms as they are meant to be understood in the context of this law. We repeat here the definition from this section to which we've referred previously:
(1) "Decision" means any determination, action, vote or final disposition upon a motion, proposal, resolution, order, ordinance or measure on which a vote of a governing body is required, at any meeting at which a quorum is present.
No discussion of Oregon's public meetings law as it pertains to the current controversy is properly complete without at least referencing this particular definition -- especially since at the Defense of Marriage Act v. Multnomah County temporary restraining order hearing, Kelly Clark (attorney with O'Donnell & Clark) and Ken Choe (attorney with the ACLU) had a brief debate over what it meant.
It seems clear from the definition as given in the law that what's being discussed is action related to a matter which will require a vote of the governing body in question. Defense has argued (as have we) that the policy change was administrative, or executive, in nature and therefore not one which required a vote of the Board of Commissioners.
As such, this reasoning goes, at no time was a "decision" as it pertains to Oregon's public meetings law involved.
The Oregonian does not have to agree with this argument, and indeed is quite free instead to agree with Kelly Clark's interpretation of how "decision" is defined by the public meetings law.
But to publish a package on the public meetings law without including any real situation-relevant context as to how that law is being debating in court risks insinuating that the County violated the law, since the Commissioners involved held no such public meeting. When taking the three pieces together, it's difficult for us to see any intent other than such an insinuation.