LET THE SUNSHINE IN: Time will tell if new laws passed this year in response to Oregon’s infamous scandal forcing the resignation of Gov. John Kitzhaber improve the state’s “F” in integrity.
By Chana Cox, PhD | Watchdog Arena
A mere two bills passed this legislative session seeking to heal Oregon’s embarrassing reputation of government integrity, amplified by the infamous 2014 scandal between disgraced Gov. John Kitzhaber and his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes. Will these new laws be enough to rehabilitate the state, or is more work to be done?
The Center for Public Integrity’s 2015 “State Integrity Investigation” released Nov. 9 graded Oregon with an “F” for accountability and transparency, as did an earlier Sunlight Foundation study. The report was sure to point out the scandal forcing Kitzhaber’s resignation.
“Kitzhaber was being investigated following media reports that his fiancé [Cylvia Hayes], a consultant, was selling access to the governor’s office and using state resources for personal gain, and that he blurred the line between his job as governor and his re-election campaign,” the Center writes. “For many, Kitzhaber’s resignation is a thing of the past. But the scandal that ensnared the former governor highlights a wobbly legal framework in Oregon’s government, where good behavior is taken for granted rather than enforced.”
On Nov. 12, Oracle Corporation–a contractor for the failed $360-million Cover Oregon health care exchange website–sued current Gov. Kate Brown for her failure to release Kitzhaber’s private emails stored on state servers, which Oracle claims are relevant to pending litigation. This controversy stems from the ongoing legal battle over who is at fault for the Cover Oregon train wreck.
“Despite numerous commitments to greater transparency and public disclosure in government dealings, Kate Brown has not lived up to her promises,” an Oracle spokeswoman told The Oregonian. In a subsequent editorial The Oregonian writes that Oracle is “no knight in shining armor,” “[b]ut the company’s assertions rightly point out a yawning gap between what public records law calls for and what Brown and [Attorney General] Rosenblum have done.”
While multiple bills to improve government accountability and transparency were introduced in the state’s 2015 Legislature, only Senate Bill 9 and House Bill 2019 were signed into law.
SB 9 calls for an audit of the procedures by which government entities release public documents to the media and the public. There are is an exorbitant number of road blocks to the release of such information. The process is long, convoluted, expensive, and some claim there is differential treatment of the media. News site GoLocal PDX suggests that the preference given to Willamette Week may have been due, in part, to the Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum being the wife of Willamette Week’s publisher.
HB 2019 reforms the Ethics Commission. For years, the Kitzhaber-appointed commission provided reasons not to respond to public inquiries. The attorney general would not comment on, much less take action on, allegations against Kitzhaber pending the Ethics Commission investigation. As governor, Kitzhaber would not comment on or take action on conflict of interest allegations against Patricia McCaib, who was employed by the governor in his official capacity, advised him on the proposed Columbia River Crossing, and simultaneously received $530,000 in consulting fees from the contractors planning that bridge. When McCaib was not even censored by the Ethics Commission report, Jorgensen lost faith in the Commission.
Under the new law, the Ethics Commission will now be selected by the Legislature and both political parties will be represented on the commission. Lawmakers were responding to testimony by Michael Rodgers, the former Department of Administrative Services employee who had refused to comply with instructions to destroy e-mails requested by the press and investigators related to the Kitzhaber/Hayes investigation.
During the investigation, Brown immediately forced Rogers to go on administrative leave and threatened to prosecute him for whistleblowing. Rogers testified that he released information directly to Willamette Week because he felt he could not go to the Ethics Commission which was entirely made up of Kitzhaber appointees — essentially the same people who had instructed him to destroy the evidence. After an expose of the threats against Rogers by Willamette Week, a settlement of almost $300,000 was reached between the state and Rogers.
In a Watchdog Arena interview, Scott Jorgensen, the author of a recently published book on Oregon government, On the Cusp of Chaos, and a prominent Republican voice who currently works as a staff member for state Sen. Doug Whitsett (R-Klamath Falls), was hopeful that based on the audit results, more bills addressing accountability and transparency will be introduced into the spring 2016 legislative session.
While both Jorgenson and Whitsett are hopeful that the newly passed laws will lead to improved accountability and transparency, John Charles, president and CEO of the non-partisan Cascade Policy Institute, told Watchdog Arena that the problems will not be so easily solved. According to Charles, they are the result of government with too much taxpayer money and essentially monopolistic powers over its citizens and its economy.
Charles, Jorgensen, and a Democratic source told Watchdog Arena they feel Oregon legislative committee hearings are often a façade. Jorgensen explained that at the end of the session, three or at most five people in Oregon make all the budgetary decisions. The budget is produced by those few people behind closed doors. It is many hundreds of pages long, and legislators are given a few hours to read the document before they are required to vote on it.
Charles says this sort of steamrolling of the public is endemic to the political process in Oregon even at the local level. However, Oregon is not unique. In the Center of Public Integrity report, only three states scored higher than a D+, while eleven flunked.
If the Congress of the United States cannot successfully subpoena public documents from a determined executive, how can a small newspaper in central Oregon or a citizen’s movement in Portland hope to do so?
This article was written by a contributor of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.