No sunshine

It's Sunshine Week, a time for newspapers to help people remember the importance of having an open government with access to government records. We have laws. Not all of them are good. Some are pretty obvious in who they are designed to protect - government employees. This week we are sharing an experience of the Herald and News newspaper in Klamath Falls, Ore.

- Editorial board

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. - Perhaps the stars were aligned just right so that the Herald and News managed to be engaged in a testy struggle with Klamath County commissioners over public records during "Sunshine Week."

We didn't plan it that way. It just happened after all of the turmoil began in county government and the newspaper asked for copies of documents related to events in the county treasurer's office and the assessor's office. The treasurer, Mike Long, lost most of his salary, most of his job and was kicked out of the county government center to do his job from somewhere else. His job now consists "only" of managing the county's $150 million in investments, because it goes with his elective office and he has refused to resign. Assessor Don Ringgold resigned, after being on paid administrative leave.

Commissioners won't release records about the circumstances surrounding either of the elected officials but did say they aren't connected.

They said  they have concerns about possible litigation, and the privacy of people mentioned in the records, but who aren't the subject of the investigations. We thought our offer to accept redacted versions of the records would protect them adequately, but commissioners said no.

The connection with Sunshine Week? Sunshine Week is a week each year when members of the news media and others "promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information." The quote comes from the Sunshine Week Web page at www.sunshineweek.org

This year, real events provoked the "dialogue" for us. We didn't have to create a "drill" to demonstrate the existing laws on open records and, actually how weak they are.

During Sunshine Week, newspapers often do such things as demonstrate the lack of familiarity by public employees with their own open records laws by sending in reporters to public offices to ask for public records as budgets and bills. We've done it here, but not for awhile, though we seek such things during the normal course of business.

Also taking place this week, we assume not a coincidence, was Oregon Attorney General John Kroger's presentation to a legislative committee.

He urged  a rewrite of Oregon's public records law, which has more than 400 exemptions. His proposals are in SB 41 and have been opposed (what else?) by government officials as expensive and difficult to comply with.

"Very few people in government want to change the rules," Kroger said. "This really is one of those situations where citizens, I think, want a very transparent government and government more-or-less believes transparency is a hassle."

Kroger's proposals would set time limits for responses from government, put limits on fees (topping out at three times the minimum wage for staff time), and eliminating about 100 exemptions, including such things as disciplinary records for government managers and complaints of waste, fraud and abuse made to the Secretary of State.

Representatives of public agencies complained about the potential burden on the agencies. Unfortunately, such things as extended deadlines aren't deadlines at all and don't just apply to the exceptional case, but instead tend to become a new norm for anagency.

Kroger is the right track. Legislators should recognize the weakness in their own laws and do more than proclaim how committed they are to transparency in government: They should show it and demand that government bodies do the same.

Which brings us back to the Klamath County commissioners. They keep telling us how much they want to release the information. Talk's cheap. Surely a redacted version of the records would  have allowed the release of  at least some of them.

Klamath Falls calls itself the "City of Sunshine." Not much of it is getting through to us.

– Herald and News, Klamath Falls, Ore.