Newsom v. DeSantis: A Prediction in advance of the "Debate."

Gavin Newsom vs. Ron DeSantis

"Newsom is not repositioning himself but rather presenting his authentic self."

A Californian sent me a comment about tonight's made-for-TV spectacle. Tony Farrell is a brand strategy expert, with a long career marketing consumer products. I had posited that Newsom was transforming himself from a San Francisco-style progressive into a moderate Democrat who had a shot at carrying battleground states where "California" is a bad brand.  Tony Farrell says no, that Newsom is a moderate Democrat ready right now for a presidential run. Tony is a college classmate. He lives in Oakland where he has had a close-up look at Newsom.

Tonight, on Fox News: 9 p.m. Eastern/ 6 p.m. Pacific

Tony Farrell in Hamburg, Germany

Guest Post by Tony Farrell

I look forward to Thursday's debate; long time coming, and actually I did not think it would happen. Likely to not help DeSantis at all, but we'll see.

For more than a decade, Newsom has been pitch-perfect as a California "commonsense" Democrat, calling out progressive nonsense when obvious (taking Lincoln's name off of schools), not hiding from the problems of homelessness, mental illness, illegal immigration, housing and more. I cannot imagine a more deft manager of an image than Gavin; he is a superior political talent and while not brilliant (like Jerry Brown), he studies and works very hard. His judgment about people seems excellent. His choice for Feinstein's replacement, great.  

No doubt in my mind he is doing all he can to step in front of Biden without stepping in front of Biden; actually, I believe he will be the nominee in 2024 through some unforeseen string of events, and that would be great. He acted like a head-of-state when the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation conference was in the Bay Area. So, I would say Newsom is not repositioning himself but rather presenting his authentic self.

There are many loud crazies on this Left Coast, and he won't put up with them; he calls them out. But he is also right-minded on most important issues that concern progressives and the mainstream, from schools to abortion. Because he's emerging on the national stage now, perhaps he is working harder to project his image nationwide; yes, he's working to dislodge the old trope of Gavin as the scofflaw mayor who married gay couples in City Hall years before made legal. He did that; now it's mainstream...a mainstream that has come to him. Not repositioning but clarification!

Curious to see DeSantis's smarts when confronted with the sharp, witty mind of a masterful speaker and debater. He'll be turned in knots, my prediction, revealing the fool he is.

 

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Charter Update: County Commissioner Salaries

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights wasn't the first on James Madison's list. 

It was third.

Prior to protecting freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, his draft Bill of Rights proposed an amendment to guarantee that Members of Congress could not raise their own pay. After a series of controversial pay raises by Congress in the 1980s, state legislatures began ratifying the amendment that had lingered nearly forgotten. It finally passed in 1992, 202 years after it was first proposed. 

 

Getting control of elected official salaries can be hard, slow work, until people get aroused. Then it can move quickly.

Jackson County's commissioners are by far the highest paid in the state of Oregon. They make $45,000 a year more than the state governor. A Jackson County, Oregon citizen group is proposing to cut county commissioner salaries nearly in half, back to $75,000 a year, with cost of living adjustments after that. People can disagree about the best way to control salary creep. Tam Moore questions whether it is best to put the mechanism into the county's charter document. Moore has been a journalist for six decades, a career interrupted by service in the Vietnam War and then a term as county commissioner in the mid-1970s.

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Tam Moore

      Fiddling with salaries

When Oregon voters passed a Constitutional amendment allowing county home rule charters back in 1958, chances are that no one thought salaries of public officials ought to be set by a vote of the people. Fast forward to 2023 and that’s exactly where a group of reform-minded sponsors want as part of a suite of three amendments to the Charter for Jackson County Oregon.

This blog has seen hundreds of words about charter revision in the past few days. Let me add mine, as a former commissioner who was in office when county voters approved the present charter in May, 1978. That charter took effect January 8, 1979, which was my last day in office.

The notion of “home rule” swept the country in the reform era of the early 20th century as local governments, often very large cities, set themselves apart from general laws enacted by states. The home rule concept holds that “matters of local interest” can best be decided by a local governing body – the city council or a county’s governing body.

The state didn’t get around to giving counties home rule options until 1959 when the enabling legislation implementing the 1958 Constitutional amendment (now Article VI Section 10 of the ever-expanding Oregon Constitution) became law. Charters, and their amendments, require approval of local voters. They are the covenant between the governed and those who exercise the governing powers.

Here's the way Jackson County’s charter puts it:

The people of Jackson County, exercising the power to govern themselves provided by Section 10, Article VI, of the Oregon Constitution and enabling legislation enacted pursuant thereto, hereby grant the County authority over matters of County concern to the fullest extent now or hereafter granted or allowed by the Constitution or a law of the United States or of Oregon, as fully as though each power comprised in that authority were specified in this Charter.

Progressive county citizens took an interest in the possibility of enacting a charter at least twice before the charter was adopted by a slim margin in that 1978 primary election – 28,907 votes for, 27,346 votes against. There’s a 1962 report of a draft charter debated in at least two community forums. It died from lack to consensus to put it before the voters. After I arrived in the county in 1967, the League of Women Voters studied the question again.

The hang up, apparently a repeat of issues from the 1962 charter debates, was that some current elected officials opposed restructuring parts of county government. Notions such as expanding the three-person Board of Commissioners or building a county-manager form of government conflicted with the people electing their Assessor, Sheriff, Treasurer, Clerk and Surveyor.

The 1977 Home Rule Charter Committee, formed by order of the Board of Commissioners, solved that conflict. They left unchanged the various elective offices, and used general language directing what future Boards of Commissioners were required to do. That was apparently enough, barely, to see approval of the charter.

The charter (in Section 24) provides that:

The compensation of personnel in the service of the County shall be fixed by the Board of County Commissioners, except that elected officials' salaries shall be fixed annually by the Budget Committee.

That authority is broad.

It allows the Board and Citizen Budget Committee members to be sensitive to whatever current financial realities exist along with what the current market is for people doing comparable work. And because the process is governed by Oregon Local Budget law, it assures that setting compensation takes place after public notice and in public meeting where citizens have their say.

Petitions being circulated now would change a critical part of the policy, placing a dollar-figure ($75,000) on commissioner salaries in 2027 contingent on voter approval of expanding the Board to five from its present three commissioners.

Fiddling with salaries in a county charter doesn’t make sense. The real objective of the current reform effort seems to be increasing the number of commissioners. Unsaid is the notion of making the office part time. But how do you arrive at proper compensation for a part-time position if the minimum pay is already set at $75,000 a year?

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Upcoming events: Thursday Evening

A TV spectacle: California Governor Gavin Newsom vs. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

In Southern Oregon: Tobias Read, a candidate for Oregon's chief election office, Oregon Secretary of State.

Newsom v. DeSantis 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Thursday on Fox News 

There are good reasons to scoff and laugh this off. The "debate" is a made-for-TV event that has all the electoral legitimacy of a pie-eating contest. Worse, it sends viewers to a network -- Fox -- and a news host -- Sean Hannity -- who are relentless propaganda organs.  Worse yet, it lets Fox and Hannity present themselves as honest brokers who can stage a fair exchange of views. 

I will record and watch it.

Gavin Newsom is attempting to do two contradictory things. He is putting himself onto the national stage as the leader of the Democratic Party. That is the job of the Democratic president or party nominee. Biden has that job and Biden's control of the Democratic Party meant that Biden blocked pathways to be replaced. Newsom is auditioning for the role he can't have. That is unless events intervene. Stuff happens. 

In a romantic comedy Newsom would be the beautiful bridesmaid that the groom is attracted to but cannot marry because some element of the plot history dooms the groom to a lackluster match with the less-beautiful bride-to-be. The decent thing for the bridesmaid to do would be to decline to show up at the rehearsal dinner, but there she is at the dinner, all too visible. In the romantic comedy -- or in the spectacle on Thursday -- the Newsom-bridesmaid makes a big speech telling guests how wonderful the bride is, how smart, how virtuous, and how happy the couple will be. The plot frisson comes because the more eloquent the speech, the more the dinner guests realize the bridesmaid is the superior match. In a happy-ending comedy, the bride calls off the wedding. In a darker drama, perhaps set in wartime, the wedding goes forward out of necessity.

This is the plot of Casablanca. It doesn't take much to see that the problems of Gavin Newsom don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. The spectacle is worth watching because we will be watching Newsom-as-Rick do the noble thing. Or maybe not completely. Or not at all.

Newsom is currently the Democratic Party's foremost spokesman for the success of Biden's presidency. He is repositioning himself from California liberal to practical moderate washing off that California-crazy scent. He wants to keep the jobs, innovation, and economic engine part of the California story while he sheds the Berkeley wokeness, the homeless on the sidewalks, and housing prices that make Americans gasp. It's TV worth watching.

DeSantis has no future. He thinks he is a contender. He is a sparring partner. 

Meanwhile, in Southern Oregon. 

Tobias Read, Oregon State Treasurer, is running for Secretary of State. 

This informal meet-and-greet takes place at the same time as the Fox News spectacle. I expect Tobias Read to be a strong candidate in a general election since he is a moderate Democrat currently holding a statewide office. 

In the past I did not spend much time thinking about the Secretary of State office, but the new GOP changed that. The GOP has not foresworn election denial. The former GOP Secretary of State candidate lost her election in 2018 but retained her office as a state senator. After the 2020 election she led a drive to get Oregonians to overturn the election by supporting the Texas lawsuit to discard the electoral votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. GOP officeholders in Oregon generally now admit that "Biden is president." But they dare not say that Biden was elected president. To say that would make one a RINO and no longer a Republican in good standing. Second District U.S. Representative Cliff Bentz (R) voted to overturn the Pennsylvania vote in January of 2020.  Both Bentz and the new Fifth District Representative, Lori Chevez-DeRemer, supported Mike Johnson for Speaker. He led the effort in the House to discard electoral votes cast for Biden.

I have many friends and former clients who vote for Republicans. I am accustomed to Republicans holding offices. The world survives. However, Republicans cannot be trusted in offices that manage elections until election denialism has been cleansed from the party. 

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Media bias

What part of the tragedy in the Holy Land do we see? Who is creating the innocent victims, Palestinians or Israelis?

If we see young people at a peaceful protest, and then in another story we see smash-and-grab shoplifting, can we tell the difference?

There is no avoiding "editorializing" no matter how fair-minded the media source. What one chooses to cover is a choice. People will call that choice "bias."

This morning the New York Times ran a story with this photo:

It depicts the damage the Israeli bombs are doing to civilians in Gaza. But what about the murders and kidnapping that Hamas did on October 7? The New York Times published stories and photos on it, too.

Is the coverage equal and fair? A harder question: Should it even be equal, if one side is right in the eyes of God and justice, and the other side wrong? Moral equivalence itself, if the balance of morality is not equivalent, is itself bias. And, of course, people disagree both about news choices and about God's will, some with passionate intensity. 

The Jewish Anti-Defamation League complains about the Washington Post's coverage, saying it is biased against Israel. New York Times contributor Mona Chalabi used the occasion of winning a Pulitzer Prize to say she thought the Times' coverage was biased against Palestinians.

A different form of bias comes in the inevitable problem that news items get placed in an arrangement on the page or in the order they are presented on TV. They can be conflated by readers and viewers. College classmate Jane Collins brought that to my attention yesterday with an example from broadcast news on TV. Placement on a page or adjacency of TV stories can make a peaceful pro-Palestine protest look and feel like a crime scene. 

There will always be bias. That doesn't make news "fake." It means that human choices and the practicalities of telling a story are baked into the very nature of storytelling.

Jane Collins interrupted her college years to spend a year in Israel, working on a kibbutz. She lives in Massachusetts. Earlier Guest Posts depicted her lighting a menorah with her granddaughters, standing in a garden, and holding a baby. She shares her thoughts and writing at https://alicet4.com

Guest Post by Jane Collins

The main story on NBC Nightly News on November 24 concerned the first hostage release in the Israel/Gaza war. About 10 minutes into the broadcast, they ran three stories, all involving heightened mall security on Black Friday. The first story was about a pro-Palestine protest in LA that briefly blocked traffic to a mall; the second was on a bomb threat in New Jersey; the third was on the continuing upsurge of “smash and grab” robberies nationwide. But the headline banner read “Black Friday Protests”, while all three images that ran over it were of the completely unrelated robberies. Viewers were left with the impression that the protesters were wearing black like Antifa, concealing their identities with masks, smashing store windows, and grabbing the goods.

I don’t think the network deliberately conflated the protest and robbery stories. Maybe Lester Holt and his staff were still digesting their Thanksgiving turkey. However, their carelessness revealed an unconscious bias. They painted with the blackest of brushes protests that were clearly motivated by moral outrage. 

Anyone who has attended big political demonstrations knows that there are usually a few people on the fringe who are looking for a fight, or for a distraction to cover some criminal activity. Often, the major media will cover the few bad actors and ignore thousands of peaceful demonstrators. 

This case was worse than usual. The news venue used images of criminal activity that it knew had no connection with a protest to smear that protest, and by extension, all pro-Palestinian protests. Millions of people watched this piece of fake news. And it wasn’t even on Fox. 

Still hoping for peace and justice,

Jane Collins

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Who Killed JFK?

I am trying to have empathy for conspiracy-believers.

One person's wacky conspiracy is another person's simple truth.

We all know the canard about having a right to one's own opinion but not to one's own facts. Nonetheless, people have their own facts.

Media commentator Brian Stelter, with information uncovered by the discovery process in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, reported that the Dominion-vote-switch idea arose from an email sent to Trump-allied lawyer Sidney Powell, who was a guest on Maria Bartiromo's Fox show. Powell's source was a woman who said she gets information through semi-conscious time travel. The source explained

how do I know all of this? … I’ve had the strangest dreams since I was a little girl. … I was internally decapitated, and yet, I live. … The Wind tells me I’m a ghost, but I don’t believe it.”

Powell repeated the source's assertion that the Dominion's tabulating machines flipped votes. Bartiromo presented it as evidence. Donald Trump began repeating the assertion, citing Fox. The idea spread. A majority of Republicans now tell pollsters that tabulating machines helped steal the 2020 election from Trump. In states and counties all across America -- including my own Jackson County -- Republican groups descend on election officials demanding they hand-count all ballots.

Intelligent people can believe crazy things. A college classmate with a long and successful career in investments writes me sharing information that the murder of 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was staged. Absolutely. For certain. The supposed dead children were child actors. All the deaths were faked. The local and state police, the town, the school, the mortuaries -- hundreds of people -- are all in on the hoax. Alex Jones had it about right, he tells me.

That seems utterly crazy to me. As does the idea that Bill Gates is somehow getting micro-chips into the Covid vaccine for future mind control. And that Michelle Obama is actually male. And that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats have a side hustle imprisoning children for use as sex toys. And that top Democrats imprison children to harvest a youth elixir, adrenochrome. And that most of the people at the Capitol on January 6 carrying Trump banners were Democrats carrying out a false flag operation.

What crazy nonsense, I think.

And yet on this 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination I am reading and listening once again to problems with the standard official government story of the lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. The Warren Report has holes, improbabilities, and inconsistencies. I have nagging doubts. Were there multiple shooters? Wasn't JFK shot from both the front and back? Were the autopsy photos switched? Why did the autopsy doctor change his autopsy notes and burn the originals? Was the CIA involved? The FBI? Castro? The USSR?  

I don't know what really happened, but I am pretty sure the official story isn't the whole truth. So, recognizing my own belief in a JFK conspiracy of misinformation, I recognize that doubting the "official story" of other controversies is a matter of choice. We pick and choose evidence. I think I make reasonable, wise decisions. People who believe wacky nonsense conspiracies think their decisions are wise and based on evidence. 

Here is an exchange this morning on X, formerly Twitter, following a bit of video of Trump at the Clemson football game on Saturday. The video depicted people jeering Trump, thus proving Trump was unpopular, the tweet asserted. Then this: 

Of course the video was cherry picked. It was real, and cherry picked, both. I also think Biden got 81 million votes; some don't.

Governments and media want to be credible, but each has incentives not to be fully truthful. They have interests to protect -- their popularity, their offices, their audiences. It was in the interest of the CIA, FBI, the Johnson Administration, and even the Kennedy family, to let sleeping dogs lie. So they came up with a simple story that eliminated awkward, embarrassing truths that would be part of any backstory.

I try to have some humility and empathy. We understand the world in a fog of facts, sham, and mis-information. People who believe conspiracies are piecing together what they hear from sources they find credible. As do I. Empathy does not mean I give up making distinctions. I am not a Pollyanna about the NY Times, Washington Post, and other news organizations. I recognize they curate news. They emphasize some things and not others. But Fox News is fundamentally different. The network cynically spread lies to fit Trump's claim of a stolen election. They knew better. They did it anyway. And they were enormously successful doing so. They understood their audience and they fed it what they thought it needed to hear. As did the Warren Report.

America is worse off for both of these.

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Easy Sunday: Part Two

Update:

Jackson County Counsel:  It's on me.

The Jackson County Counsel, Joel Benton, wrote me to say that authority for making fee waivers had been delegated to him and he exercised that authority. Moreover,

"I did not confer with anyone else when I reviewed Ms. Krause’s request for a waiver or reduction of the fee for her request."

I will take him at his word. 

When I was county commissioner forty years ago, a decision that involved interaction with a highly visible citizen group involving the very structure of local government would have been made in consultation and concurrence of the county commissioners. The elected commissioners were responsible for what the county did -- its decisions, its actions, its reputation. The buck stopped with us, not staff. 

That's why we got paid.

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Easy Sunday, Part One; Thanksgiving greeting from a stable genius

Trump on his TruthSocial website. Thanksgiving morning, 2:02 a.m. 

Verbatim.  

"Happy Thanksgiving to ALL, including the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia 'Peekaboo' James, who has let Murder & Violent Crime FLOURISH, & Businesses FLEE; the Radical Left Trump Hating Judge, a 'Psycho,' Arthur Engoron, who Criminally Defrauded the State of New York, & ME, by purposely Valuing my Assets at a 'tiny' Fraction of what they are really worth in order to convict me of Fraud before even a Trial, or seeing any PROOF, & used his Politically Biased & Corrupt Campaign Finance Violator, Chief Clerk Alison Greenfield, to sit by his side on the 'Bench' & tell him what to do; & Crooked Joe Biden, who has WEAPONIZED his Department of Injustice against his Political Opponent, & allowed our Country to go to HELL; & all of the other Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, Fascists, Marxists, Democrats, & RINOS, who are seriously looking to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY. Have no fear, however, we will WIN the Presidential Election of 2024, & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"

Biden is old, inarticulate, experienced, cautious, and measured in his manner.

Trump is old and profoundly unwell. 

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District Attorney backs charter-update group

Beth Heckert, Jackson County District Attorney, tells Jackson County to offer fee discount.

It was a "win" on two principles:

     1. Commissioner salary information is in the general public interest.

     2. The charter-update group, Jackson County for All, is not old-style media but it has the capacity to disseminate information to the public.

This controversy was never about the money. The charter-update group could easily have paid the county fee. The District Attorney decision, directing the county to offer a 25% fee discount, is important because the District Attorney's decision agreed that there is widespread and legitimate public interest in commissioner salaries. It also recognized that the media landscape is different today than it was back when "the news" arrived in a printed newspaper.

This blog looks at intended and unintended messages in politics. District Attorney Heckert's decision clarifies that the county -- for whatever reason -- was bending over backwards to say "no," and was asserting a weak argument to justify the decision. I regret that the county took that position because it just looks so bad for it. I want the county to be well respected. The easiest inference for the public to make is that the county wanted to obstruct sharing the data. That implies that someone -- presumably the commissioners -- thought the data unflattering in some way and that it weakened their position of opposition to the current system in which commissioners vote their own salaries.

Here is the District Attorney's written decision:

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Jackson County responds: No.

The County is sticking to its position.

The county says the charter-change group isn't "media" and couldn't widely disseminate the information on commissioner salaries.

County website. By chance the photograph taken from Lower Table Rock includes my farm, positioned just above the word "County."

I think the Jackson County position is foolish and it sends a message of defensiveness and obstruction. The county disagrees. The county asserts it has the legal right to decide that it does not think the charter-change group can disseminate the information the county would look up. The county has discretion here, and it made its choice.

The county says it doesn't want to set a bad precedent. 

The County Counsel says the time he has spent fighting to charge the $284.64 has been "fairly de minimus," i.e. negligible, and that it is part of his salaried job, not extra work. I think it is obvious that a lot of wasted resources have gone into defending a weak county position. The county disagrees.

The Counsel would not reveal whose idea this was to put a nuisance roadblock in front of the charter-change group --  his own, the County Administrator's, or the three commissioners. He cited client confidentiality. As this will play out, the commissioners will get the blame. Legally -- theoretically at least -- the County Administrators work for them, not the other way around. The fallout is political and hurts the commissioners. 

I offered the County Counsel the unsolicited advice to provide the salary data available freely and gladly, based on the fact obvious to the public -- if not the county -- that the information was of general interest and would be distributed widely. Look helpful, not defensive, I suggested. He said that would be "highly inappropriate."

I am grateful for his good, timely response. Here he is in his own words:

Response from Joel Benton, Senior Deputy County Administrator/County Counsel

Sorry for the delay in responding to you. I was off of work yesterday, Thanksgiving, when you posted your article to your blog and subsequently emailed me that day for comment, spending some rare time with my family to celebrate the holiday. I didn’t read your email until this morning when I returned to work. 

 

I’d like to begin responding to your questions with some background information. The County Board of Commissioners sets the fees for all services provided by the County. They do so annually pursuant to a board order after a properly noticed public hearing. This fee schedule includes the fees for public records requests and the research required to respond to a public records request. The current fee, which has been the fee for as long as I can remember, for employee time to respond to a public records request is the Cost + Overhead of that employee. The fee schedule itself does not define what “cost + overhead” means. However, the Board of Commissioners enacted an ordinance which does define how cost is calculated - Jackson County Codified Ordinance Section 211.02. This Section, which was originally enacted in 1989 as part of the original codification of the Jackson County Codified Ordinances, and amended numerous times over the years, sets forth the definition of and methodology for determine cost for the purposes of fees. Without doing any research, my impression would be that the origins of the fee ordinance likely predates 1989.

 

It is pursuant to the board order and adopted ordinances that fees are calculated, including the fees for responding to public records requests. All employees of Jackson County, including myself, have an obligation to follow all duly enacted orders and ordinances of the County. 

 

With that said, I cannot disclose the existence or nature of any conversations I had with either Danny [Jordan, the County Administrator], the Board of Commissioners, or any other employee of Jackson County. I hope you appreciate my ethical obligation to keep attorney-client communications confidential.  I can say that I did not calculate the initial fee estimate provided to Mr. Krause as part of her public records request. That calculation was done by the personnel of the County who were responsible for providing the initial response. 

I become involved in this request when Mr. Krause requested a complete waiver of the fee for responding to her public records request. Pursuant to Board Order 22-18, the County Administrator is person designated as having the authority to make the determination for a waiver or reduction of the fees for a public records request. The County Administrator has delegated that authority to me, as County Counsel and Senior Deputy County Administrator. I did not confer with anyone else when I reviewed Mr. Krause’s request for a waiver or reduction of the fee for her request.

 

In general, when reviewing a request for a fee waiver or reduction, I rely upon the guidance provided by the Oregon Attorney General’s Manual of Public Records and Meetings. While not binding on local governments, the Manual is a very good resource upon which the courts have relied. Further, use of the Manual helps to ensure that all public records requests, including requests for waivers or reductions are treated in a fair and consistent manner. When responding to public records requests, including fee waiver or reduction requests, Jackson County does not look at the reasons for the request or who the person or entity is who is making the request. We solely rely upon the provisions of ORS Ch. 192, the Manual, applicable court decisions, and other interpretative materials to ensure our legal obligations and responsibilities comport with the law. I hope you can appreciate that the County takes responding to public records requests, and accompanying fee waiver requests, very seriously.

 

In response to your three questions:

 

1. As an initial matter, the County does not only waive public records request fees for the “media.” We apply the standards set forth in the Manual to determine if the request has the ability to disseminate the information to the public. In my email to Ms. Krause, I used the media as an example, as she indicated she was asking for the waiver, in part, because she intended to provide the materials to the media and/or was somehow asking for the waiver of the fees on behalf of local media. That response was not an in general response that the media or only the media gets fees waived or reduction.

 

The County does consider the media to include people who report on the County’s operations and issues via non-traditional means, including Facebook groups, blogs, and other web based formats. However, as I wrote in my response to Ms. Krause, the obligation is to demonstrate that a requestor can disseminate the records requested and is on the requestor. The mere existence of a website, Facebook group, or blog does not, in my opinion, demonstrate that the requestor has the ability to disseminate the information. If the mere existence of a website or Facebook group was the standard for reducing or waiving a fee, the exception set forth in the ORS to the authority to charge a fee, could easily swallow the authority to charge a fee, as there is no cost to create a Facebook group, for example. As to the extent and viewership of Ms. Krause’s web presence, or the presence of any other website, the County has no way to check as to whether or not the public is relying upon that web presence.

 

So, in response to your specific question – “on what basis does the county argue that a group the size and activity of the charter change group, with a website, Facebook, signature gatherers, etc. is not “media” doing meaningful public dissemination” – the County, and I, have no idea of what the size of the group of or the activity of the charter change group is. We, as an entity, do not have the means or resources to monitor such activities or groups. Thus, as Ms. Krause only identified the existence of the web presence, and did not provide any information to demonstrate that the web presence had the meaningful ability to disseminate the information, I had no ability to make the determination that the standards set forth in the Manual were satisfied for a fee waiver or reduction. 

 

2. Perhaps I misunderstood your questions, but the County is not opposed to fulfilling Ms. Krause’s public records request. The County is only looking to follow the duly enacted ordinances and orders of the Board of Commissioners and to follow the provisions of the ORS to ensure that all requests are treated in an equal and equitable manner. The County receives many public records requests, and almost as many requests for fee waivers and reductions for those requests. To treat Ms. Krause’s request for a fee waiver differently than, say, other requests for a fee waiver or reduction would be highly inappropriate. And, to waive or reduce the fee for Ms. Krause, based on what she provided in her request for her waiver, would set a standard that likely would leave the County approving a significant number of fee waiver requests. While the fee estimate for Ms. Krause’s request may seem high, we have public records requests that have estimated fees in the tens of thousands of dollars or even higher, which would likely be granted under the standards set by Mr. Krause’s waiver request. The County, simply put, does not have the resources to broadly waive fees in all cases.

 

As to the amount of time the County currently has into Mr. Krause’s request, that isn’t the standard by which the County reviews requests for fee waivers or reductions. The original estimate was 3 hours to gather, compile, and provide the records Mr. Krause requested. This is actual employee time to do so. Despite Ms. Krause’s beliefs to the contrary, there is no simple database to query to extract the information she has requested. For each year, the County will need to make three separate queries for each Commissioner and then compile that information into a spreadsheet. Because of the number of years in her request, that’s nearly 150 separate queries to perform along with the time to compile that information.

 

As to my time, I have a fairly de minimus amount, though I haven’t tracked it specifically. But, as a salaried employee, I am responsible for performing all of my duties and obligations, regardless of whether or not I am engaged in work more than 40 hours in a week. As such, my time spent responding to Ms. Krause, and now you, is at no additional cost to the County.

 

3. I’m not sure what you mean by the “strategy of demanding a charge to look up the salary data.” The methodology for estimating the cost to respond to Ms. Krause’s public records request is as set forth, as above, in the Board’s orders and duly enacted ordinance, under the authority of ORS 192. The County charges the full cost for any public records request, regardless of the content of the request or who is making the request, unless the requestor demonstrates that they meet the standards for a fee waiver or reduction.

 

I will conclude with a response to your “advice” that the County simply provide the requested information for free and blame this as a “pre-holiday” mistake. If I’m understanding what you wrote, I believe that would be highly inappropriate. That would be treating Ms. Krause’s request differently than other requests for non-legitimate reasons. That is asking the County to pick whom the County likes – in the sense that the County waives or reduces one person’s fee even if they don’t meet the standard and whom the County doesn’t like – in the sense that the County would deny another person’s fee waiver or reduction request. As such, I sincerely hope I misunderstood your “advice” and you aren’t asking the County to pick winners or losers based on the content of their speech. 

 

Joel 

Joel C. Benton

Senior Deputy County Administrator/County Counsel

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Is this blog "Media"???

Jackson County, Oregon raises the question:
     What is "media" anymore?

Jackson County is drawing attention to county commissioner "salary creep." 

It is the un-intended consequence of trying to obstruct the charter-change group from getting the information they requested. The county says the charter-change group isn't "media."

Lanyards I wear at presidential campaign events

Jackson County commissioners are paid about $143,000 a year, making them by far the highest paid county commissioners of the 36 Oregon counties. The county is putting up roadblocks for documenting that salary creep, which sends a message that the county wants to hide something. 

A local citizen group is circulating a petition to make the elected county commissioner job nonpartisan, to raise the number from three to five, and to cut their salaries in about half. They have over 5,500 signatures so far.The current commissioners are on record opposing the changes. The county slow-walked its response to the group's request for the salaries of commissioners going back to 1975. After a week the county responded, but not with the requested information. Instead, they sent an invoice for $284.64, saying it needed to be paid before they would provide the information. The county used the excuse that freely giving the information to the charter-change group is not in "the public interest." The county's counsel, Joel Benton, argued in a long correspondence exchange:

[T]he County has typically only granted fee reductions or waivers to requesters who have demonstrated the ability to disseminate the records or information to wide audiences, such as requesters who represent established newspapers and media outlets.

While the public may have expressed an interest in the subject of your records request, you have not demonstrated an ability to meaningfully disseminate the information. As such, the disclosure will not primarily benefit the public and the request for a fee waiver or reduction is denied. 

This is a case study of foolish, self-destructive messaging. I am disappointed to see such boneheaded cluelessness. The county faces important problems, including the inadequate jail and homeless encampments on county land. I want the county to be good at governing, which means being good at communicating important things to county residents. I want them to have a reputation for earnest helpfulness in the public interest. Alas, no.

The county is being as un-cooperative as it is legally possible to be, at the worst possible time, on the worst subject. The overall question raised by the charter change group is whether the current commissioner structure offers good value in providing representation and communication. Yet the county's response is bureaucratic and non-transparent. The charter-change message is that the county structure is stuck in the past and needs an update. Yet the county's own excuse for obstruction is mired in the past, arguing that "established newspapers and media outlets" constitute the way local residents get their news.  

Are they joking? 

The "established newspapers" went broke and closed in Ashland and Medford. The Mail Tribune shut down earlier this year. Have they forgotten already? 

Forty years ago, when I was a commissioner, eight local radio stations had reporters on the county beat. Now there are zero. 

An "established media outlet," local TV station KTVL, closed its news department in May. The TV stations that remain direct resources to their web pages, which are now an integrated part of their news presentations. 

People get their news from Facebook, Apple News, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, podcasts, a local on-line newspapers like Ashland.news and local hybrid newspapers like the Rogue Valley Times and Daily Courier, web pages from organizations, mass email services like Mail Chimp, and blogs like this one. "Established newspapers" are dying off and print/online hybrids like the Rogue Valley Times are normalizing getting news on line.

Rogue Valley Times pop-up ad this morning

I don't take at face value the argument by Jackson County's counsel that "established media" is how local people would get news about commissioner salary creep. Of course he knows better. He isn't an idiot. The county is obstructing by playing dumb. People interested in the charter change and commissioners' salaries will get that information passed along from the leadership of the charter change group, whose voices are amplified, spread, posted, and through the channels of formal and informal media. Between the multiple social media sites, their own website, non-established media -- and, yes, the new versions of "established media" -- the word would get out. 

This blog is a tiny part of that network of communication. This blog is, alas, small potatoes. It has never really caught on. But even this blog got a measured 10,503 readers last month on the blogspot site plus another 30,064 via the substack site that comes by email. More views surely happen when people forward email versions of the blog, or if people read more than one story in a single visit. This is the new media landscape. It isn't established, but it is real.

The county is not so blind to reality to think that the charter change group couldn't spread the word about commissioner salary creep. That was pretext. The real reason is the opposite. People would indeed learn of it and the county thought the public might not like what they learned. The county strategy is to pretend that media is stuck in the 1980's. It isn't. 

And the longer the county delays and comes up with excuses, the more curious people will be about that salary creep problem. The county can fix this mess. Quit delaying. Quit acting like it has something to hide. Quit being a bureaucratic bully. Be the open, transparent, helpful government people want. 

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Jackson County resists sharing Commissioner salary data

County charges charter-change group $284.64.

Message to citizens: the county has something to hide.

A struggle has been going on behind the scenes in the citizen effort to update the Jackson County, Oregon charter. The petition drive leaders asked the county what commissioners got paid, going back to 1975. The county said you need to pay to get that information.

One of the three issues on petitions circulating in my home county would cut the current $143,000 salary for Commissioners approximately in half. It goes along with a petition to increase the number of commissioners from three to five and one to make the positions non-partisan. Petition-circulators report getting near-universal support from citizens. Jackson County's commissioners are by far the highest paid among Oregon's 36 counties. Charter-change organizer Denise Krause requested the salary data going back to 1975 so the initiative group could respond to inquiries about commissioner "salary creep'"

Jackson County said that providing the information would cost the charter-change group $284.64. A fee would be required to get that information, the county wrote, unless the custodian of the public records -- the county -- "determines that the waiver or reduction of fees is in the public interest because making the record available primarily benefits the general public."

You have not demonstrated an ability to meaningfully disseminate the information. As such, the disclosure will not primarily benefit the public and the request for a fee waiver or reduction is denied. Therefore, I have attached an invoice.

The charter-change group disseminates information widely via social media including their website, Facebook, emails, press releases to traditional media, and one-on-one to a hundred circulators, and then through them to the many hundreds of people they meet as they circulate petitions. That sounds like meaningful dissemination to me.

The cost involved, supposedly to pay a clerk to look up the payroll records -- $284.64 -- is minimal, and it isn't the point. That is proven by the county response. It put two senior county employees on the case, a "Recruitment Specialist" and the county's "Senior Deputy County Administrator and County Counsel." They prepared and sent long, detailed legal arguments telling the charter-change group that the county could and would supply the information, that the information is public and the public has every right to it, and it would indeed supply it to others whom they deem public disseminators, but not to them. Sorry.  The information could have been looked up and provided in a fraction of the time and effort that it took for senior county employees to nitpick and fabricate that excuse for saying "no, not to you." It is patently ridiculous, and the county looks silly and petty for doing it.

In fact it is worse than silly and petty. It looks guilty. Are they embarrassed about the data? Is it indefensible in some way? 

The charter change group is asking a simple and legitimate question. The commissioners set their own salaries when the commissioners review and ratify the budget committee recommendation, so it is perfectly reasonable to ask how much are commissioners voting to pay themselves?

The county is making a bonehead mistake. This was an opportunity to communicate openness and transparency. If the commissioners feel they give good value for their salary, then they could say so, proudly and clearly. They could explain their work and defend what they are paid, and they had darned well better be able to do so. We are, after all, paying them to do a job. Transparent public communication is the reason for having skilled, professional communicators as commissioners.

But, no.

The county commissioners went the way of playing defense, and put up roadblocks. They are shouting out the opposite message, that they have a deal too sweet to bear public scrutiny.  And that would be why we need a charter change, so the public can re-take control of commissioner salaries.

The county handled this foolishly.

Here is a link to the records request and a link to the longer exchange between the charter-change organizers and the county. Read for yourself. You will see.

                                                     ---     ---

Disclosure:

I am part of the salary history being requested. I was elected County Commissioner in 1980 notwithstanding the Reagan landslide election. A key element of my campaign was my criticism of the pay raise the commissioners had recently implemented. Writing from memory, the prior board raised their salaries from about $27,000/year to a little over $30,000/year. I said I would refuse the raise by gifting the raise back to local charities, and I did so. Shortly afterwards, the bottom dropped out of the O&C income the county relied upon, and the Commissioners voted to return salaries back to the prior level. I thought I was well worth the salary I was paid in the role that the commissioners then had, but I understood that that the public was skeptical and disagreed. They are still skeptical, now more than ever, for good reason.

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