City misuses meetings law

Baker City officials and the City Council violated at the least the spirit of Oregon’s public meetings law on March 10 when they discussed, during an executive session closed to the public, City Manager Steve Brocato’s proposal to privatize the city’s planning department.

As its name implies, the public meetings law is supposed to ensure that city councils and other public bodies conduct their business during meetings open to the public.

The law does, however, allow public entities to discuss certain topics during executive sessions. The public is not allowed to attend such sessions. The news media can sit in, but most reporters agree not to report on the sessions (although the law does not prohibit reporters from doing so).

The subject the Baker City Council cited for its March 10 executive session is “employment of a public officer, employee, staff member or individual agent.”

That’s ORS 192.660(2)(a).

But the discussion that took place March 10 wasn’t about actually hiring a planning contractor. Such a discussion wasn’t even possible then, since the city hadn’t yet asked contractors to submit proposals, so councilors had no prospective planners to choose from.

The purpose of the executive session was for Brocato to introduce his proposal to councilors.

That’s not an allowable subject for an executive session under any of the exemptions listed in ORS 192.660.

Nor is that a subject that Brocato and the City Council should have broached during a meeting closed to the public.

The public meetings law allows councilors to schedule an executive session to discuss who they want to hire, but only after they’ve decided, in a public meeting, that they’re considering such a move.

That’s the appropriate sequence for any decision that involves how a city goes about its business.

Although we think Brocato’s proposal has potential — it could save the city more than $80,000 — and that councilors should seriously consider endorsing the idea, the change the city manager suggests could significantly affect how the city spends taxpayers’ dollars and how it plans for the city’s future.

Both are important topics. And Oregon’s public meetings law is designed to ensure city residents have the right to be present when their elected officials discuss such topics.

As it stands, the public’s first chance to do so on the matter of privatizing the planning department will be Tuesday’s Council meeting.

Fortunately, the City Council has yet to act on Brocato’s proposal.

Unfortunately, the city has already solicited proposals from contractors interested in running the planning department. And Brocato has pared the four proposals he received to two — one of which is from the company that Don Chance, the city’s planning director, owns.

The public is legally entitled to know about these decisions when they are made, not after.