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About Willamette week. (Portland, Or.) 1974-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 11, 2017)
DID YOU KNOW? 200,000 Wisconsin Voters Were Kept Away From the Polls, and Trump Won the State by 22,000 Votes CITY HALL IS HIDING POLICE TACTICS BEHIND HUGE PUBLIC RECORDS FEES. ksh e p h e rd @ wwe e k.com Despite a legislative session marked by reforms pages of public records related to a database of to Oregon’s public records law, a troubling alleged gang members. trend is emerging among Portland’s city agen- The bureau initially denied her request for a cies. They are in eff ect censoring local media by fee waiver, but Brosseau appealed to the Mult- refusing to comply with the spirit of the public nomah County district attorney, who considers records law. appeals when a city or county agency denies a Legislators passed the law in 1973. Their records request or fee waiver. The DA cannot, goal was transparency. “The public is entitled to however, make a ruling on whether a cost esti- know how the public’s business is conducted,” mate is reasonable or not. says the Oregon Attorney General’s Public The DA noted that “where fees in excess Records and Meetings Manual. of a thousand dollars have been found rea- But when handling requests for public sonable, they usually involve requests for documents—already paid for by taxpayers— thousands or tens of thousands of pages several city agencies engage in price gouging of records.” He ordered the Police Bureau as a deliberate delay tactic. to reconsider, but did not say whether the On Aug. 30, for example, WW requested bureau had to waive or reduce the fee. emails that would shed light on the city of Port- Those 39 pages would reveal details of how land’s response to street protests. The protests police officers justified designating suspects preoccupied the city this summer: They regu- in the agency’s controversial gang database. larly degenerated into politically charged brawls As Brosseau recently detailed on Twitter, the and damaged property. Portland police were bureau eventually gave Brosseau the records criticized for their tactics, which included fi ring nearly one year after her initial request—one pepper balls and rubber bullets into crowds and day before the city announced it was disposing pepper-spraying protesters. of the gang list. Mayor Ted Wheeler’s offi ce asked for $3,189 When Oregon’s public records law first for a set of emails between six staff ers discuss- went into eff ect, it established a presumption of ing the protests. openness—the burden lay with the government The public records law agency to demonstrate that permits agencies to charge a record was exempt from requesters the cost of pro- disclosure. ducing records but also “When I first started as a “GOVERNMENT allows for fee waivers if reporter, it worked as it was CAN CHARGE “making the record available intended to work,” says Brent FOR EVERY L AST primarily benefi ts the general Walth, assistant professor PAPER CLIP, public.” at the University of Oregon JUST TO MAKE Wheeler’s offi ce acknowl- and former WW news editor. edged a clear public interest “It was a law of disclosure. IT DIFFICULT FOR in producing the documents. It took clear evidence that a THE PUBLIC “ T h e c i t y a g re e s i t s record was exempt from dis- TO SEE WHAT constituents deserve the closure [to justify a denial].” THE PUBLIC fullest picture relating to the But over the years, leg- protests,” Wheeler’s office islators passed hundreds of ALREADY OWNS.” responded to a petition for exemptions, making it more a fee waiver. “Public offi cials’ difficult to access records policy decisions are of public created during the course of interest due to the use of city resources and government business and funded by taxpayers. safety, transparency, and First Amendment In 2015, the Center for Public Integrity gave concerns.” Oregon an F grade for ease of access to public But the mayor’s offi ce did not agree to the information—due in part to a lack of timeliness fee waiver. Instead, it off ered WW a 25 percent and high costs. discount. After the 2017 reforms—which set deadlines In other words, it determined that the pub- for response times, established a Sunshine lic had an interest in seeing the records in the Commission to review exemptions, and created newspaper only if the paper fi rst paid $2,287. a public records advocate position—it is more That’s a steep price for a small newspaper, and difficult to sneak a new exemption through WW hasn’t paid it. the Legislature. But the reforms didn’t tackle Some transparency advocates believe high the recurring problem of blocking requests by fees are intended to keep the public in the dark. charging exorbitant fees. “It’s apparent to me and to others that “It was a lot of work to accomplish what we doing that is intended to discourage people did during the attorney general’s task force,” from going after public records,” says Judson says state Rep. John Huffman (R-The Dalles), Randall, co-founder of public-records nonprofi t who worked on the Attorney General’s Public Open Oregon. “It’s simply a technique to keep Records Law Reform Task Force. “Costs and the records from being released. It’s a crummy response times defi nitely came up in the con- technique, to say the least.” versations, but it was challenging to come to a The mayor’s offi ce defends its practices. reasonable conclusion.” “We believe transparency is an essential Members of the public lack an avenue to element of good governance, and make every appeal unreasonable fees. The law allows for effort to achieve that value under our public government agencies to charge the “actual records laws,” says Michael Cox, spokesman cost” of producing the records. However, it does for Wheeler’s offi ce. “Collecting and reviewing not off er further guidance on how to calculate records can be a time-consuming, and therefore that cost or place limits on what government costly, process.” can charge. It’s not just the mayor’s offi ce. In late 2016, “Government can charge for every last paper the Portland Police Bureau asked Oregonian clip,” Walth says, “just to make it diffi cult for the reporter Carli Brosseau to pay $1,170 for just 39 public to see what the public already owns.” 16 Willamette Week OCTOBER 11, 2017 wweek.com RIOT COP PHOTOGRAPHED BY WILLIAM GAGAN BY KATI E S HE PHE RD The 2016 election was the fi rst election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act, first passed in 1965. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), a 5-4 conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision requiring juris- dictions with a history of viola- tions to “pre-clear” changes. As a result, changes to voting laws in nine states and parts of six others with long histories of racial dis- crimination in voting were no longer subject to federal approval in advance. Since Shelby, 14 states, including many Southern states and key swing states, implemented new voting restrictions, in many cases just in time for the election. These included restrictive vot- er-identifi cation laws in Texas and North Carolina, English-only elections in many Florida counties, as well as last-minute changes of poll locations, and changes in Arizona voting laws that had pre- viously been rejected by the U.S. Department of Justice before the Shelby decision. Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, was foremost among a small number of non-mainstream journalists to cover the suppression efforts and their results. In May 2017, he reported on an analysis by Pri- orities U.S.A. of the effects of voter suppression, which showed that strict voter-ID laws in Wisconsin and other states resulted in a “signifi cant reduction” in voter turnout in 2016 with “a dispro- portionate impact on African-American and Democratic-leaning voters.” Berman noted that turnout was reduced by 200,000 votes in Wisconsin, while Donald Trump won the state by just over 22,000 votes. Nationwide, the study found that the change in voter turnout from 2012 to 2016 was significantly impacted by new voter-ID laws. In counties that were more than 40 per- cent African-American, turnout dropped 5 percent with new voter-ID laws, compared to 2.2 percent without. In counties that were less than 10 percent African-American, turnout decreased 0.7 percent with new voter-ID laws, compared to a 1.9 percent increase without. As Berman concluded, “This study provides more evidence for the claim that voter-ID laws are designed not to stop voter impersonation fraud, which is virtually nonexistent, but to make it harder for cer- tain communities to vote.” As Berman noted in an article published by Moyers & Company in December 2016, the topic of “gutting” the Voting Rights Act did not arise once during the 26 presidential debates prior to the elec- tion, and “cable news devoted hours and hours to Trump’s absurd claim that the election was rigged against him while spending precious little time on the real threat that voters faced.” CONT. on page 18