Oregon Sunshine Committee shares its origin story

Presenter: The Oregon Sunshine Committee offered a status report this month and shared its origin story. Before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 24, Charlie Fisher: 

Charlie Fisher: I’m the state director at OSPIRG as well as the co-chair of the Oregon Sunshine Committee.

[00:00:14] I want to spend just a little time talking about who we are–who the Sunshine Committee is–and our plans for the coming year.

[00:00:22] So a little bit of history. The Sunshine Committee came out of a work group initially convened in 2015 by then-Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to make recommendations to the legislature on how to improve Oregon’s public records laws.

[00:00:36] One of the recommendations from that task force was to attempt to simplify and clarify exemptions to public records. At the time, there were over 550 of them, and as you might imagine, that number has grown since, to, I think now to 600-650.

[00:00:52] So in 2017, the legislature passed House Bill 2101, which created the Sunshine Committee and tasked it with reviewing those hundreds of exemptions to public records, and ultimately reduce that number by either combining, amending, or deleting exemptions.

[00:01:12] The committee is made up of 11 members with different perspectives. We meet every other month. And just to give you a sense of who’s on the committee, there’s a combination of reporters, as well as public interest advocates like myself, as well as representatives from various levels of government.

[00:01:29] Because we have different perspectives that come to the table, we are able to, I think, thoughtfully and comprehensively think through what the implications are of specific exemptions to public records and take into account all of those perspectives.

[00:01:44] And as a result, I think we have come up with some good recommendations on what to do with the set of exemptions that we’ve reviewed. So far, we’ve reviewed about 250 of them. So we have a little ways to go, but we’ve made good progress.

[00:02:00] I’ll just say quickly, a couple of the categories of exemptions that we’ve looked at and made recommendations on are criminal investigatory information, professional licensing records and information, primarily focused around complaints and what to do with them, as well as trade secrets.

[00:02:18] So those are just three categories of exemptions that we’ve reviewed and made recommendations on, which are in more detail on the record. 

[00:02:26] Presenter: Charlie also spoke to legislators earlier in the year, as the Sunshine Committee requested another five years to finish its work.  Speaking for Senate Bill 890 Feb. 10, Charlie Fisher:

[00:02:38] Charlie Fisher: We had a little bit of a delay during COVID, and so that pushed back a lot of the review of the exemptions and then just, it’s a difficult task. And so, pushes it back for five years to have our work hopefully done by Dec. 31, 2031.

[00:02:55] But more importantly, currently our reports are sent to a public records subcommittee that was created by House Bill 2101, that doesn’t ever meet.

[00:03:05] And so given that the Judiciary Committee is the one that typically public records policies go through, we thought it would make sense to have the reports be available to the Judiciary Committee in even-numbered years ahead of the May Legislative Days.

[00:03:20] So that to the extent that there are any legislative recommendations that we have, those can actually be considered in the time frame that would be needed to bring something forward to the legislature.

[00:03:29] Presenter: Senate Bill 890 did pass earlier this year. With an update on Nov. 24, Charlie Fisher:

[00:03:36] Charlie Fisher: And so now your committee and the House Judiciary Committee are the recipients of our reports, and they’ll be delivered ahead of the spring Legislative Days in even-numbered years with the anticipation that we’ll bring forward legislation in 2027.

[00:03:50] So our plan for the next six months is to compile our previous recommendations as well as the ones that we are going to make in the coming months into something that we hopefully can bring forward as a bill in the long session in 2027.

[00:04:03] Another aspect of House Bill 2101 was the creation of open government impact statements that are available with all introduced bills. We’ve done our best to review these and give input during session. So we’ve tried to look at all of the bills before session starts each year that have open government impact statements.

[00:04:24] And then to the extent that there are bills that implicate public records that we’ve made recommendations on already, we’ve tried our best to submit testimony, basically just raising that and recommending to the legislature what to do about them.

[00:04:40] But just given the timeline of the open government statements being made public and then just the timelines of the legislative process, we haven’t done that as consistently as we would like.

[00:04:53] And so, you know, we’d respectfully ask you that to the extent that you have bills that may impact public records, we’d be happy to provide input ahead of time and guidance.

[00:05:05] And we also would respectfully ask you to avoid as much as possible adding new exemptions to our always-growing list.

[00:05:13] So I think the takeaway broadly is we want to be available to you as a resource. We’re happy to look at things as requested, which we have done in the past. And we also would ask your help in making our job doable by as much as possible refraining from adding further exemptions to public records.

[00:05:34] Presenter: In the eight years since its creation in 2017, the Oregon Sunshine Committee has only reviewed about 250 of as many as 650 exemptions. Members now have another five years to finish up, but the legislature is continuing to add more, and next year could be considering an exemption for license plate reader images.