Bills shine light on gray areas of public meeting laws

Oregon has robust public meeting laws. From requiring that all public meetings of the governing body are recorded and posted on the governing body's website to allowing journalists into executive sessions, Oregon values transparency.

Those robust laws can lead to some confusion with how things actually play out on the ground. House Bill 4161 and House Bill 4177 aim to clear up some of the confusion created with recent interpretations of rules related to free meals and serial communications.

Last year, the Oregon Government Ethics Committee released an opinion that raised eyebrows for elected leaders and people who work for public bodies. The opinion stated that a public body, absent a policy, could not provide food or beverages to its public officials without running afoul of ethics laws.

The reasoning was that the food and beverages provided are a financial benefit that the general public does not receive. Offering food and beverages to the public body would be permissible if the public body adopted a policy or included it in public officials' compensation packages. Unfortunately, many elected positions around the state are volunteer positions and therefore do not receive a compensation package. This opinion caused chaos, and many public bodies stopped offering food all together.

At the same time, board members have been struggling to adhere to a serial meeting communication law enacted in 2023, which prohibits communications by a quorum of a public body outside a public meeting. The law's purpose was to prohibit a public body from using other methods of communication (texting, email, etc) to skirt the openness of the public meeting process.

Let's say Director A texts Director B about an upcoming decision the board is voting on. Then Director B texts Director C about what A and B discussed, and so on and so forth, thereby creating a serial communication with a quorum of the board. After advice from OGEC, many public body members felt that they could not communicate with each other at all without violating that law - whether it was to receive education on a topic, schedule an upcoming meeting or get advice from one another.

Spencer Lewis, OSBA Policy Services director, and I participated in a public meeting workgroup with OGEC, legislators and representatives from other local governments to fix these issues. Enter HB 4161 and 4177.

HB 4161 would add food and beverages (and swag) as exceptions to the financial gain law. It would permit public bodies to offer food and beverages to public officials during meetings or other official events held by the public body. It would also allow a public body to provide merchandise to its public officials if the cost does not exceed $100 in a calendar year or as otherwise established in the public body's policy.

HB 4177 would clean up the definitions of serial communications. It would change the definition of "deliberation" to narrowly define it as "discussion or communication in which the members of a governing body examine, weigh or reflect upon the reasons for or against a decision that is subject to the jurisdiction of the governing body."

It would also prohibit the governing body from using a series of communications for the purpose of "circumventing the requirements" of public meeting laws, clarifying that the prohibition applies solely to efforts to skirt the law. The bill would also exempt situations that are not considered a serial communication: procedural matters; factual or education information; comments made to a representative of the news media, constituents or members of the public; and messages made for the purpose of gathering information related to a decision.

These new bills, if they pass, will provide a little more clarity to school board members and enable them to govern effectively, without worrying about inadvertently violating ethics or public meeting laws.

- Adrienne Anderson
OSBA government relations counsel