InvestigateWest (http://www.invw.org/author/lee-van-der-voo/)
Oregon Congressman Greg Walden is drawing the ire of net neutrality proponents for opposing FCC consumer protections while receiving contributions from big telecommunications companies. But the story isn’t quite as black and white as you might think.
Journalists have to work every day to keep government transparent to citizens. A new batch of laws in Oregon will help them to do that.
Unbelievably, the Oregon Legislature gave a blanket exemption from the Public Records Law to documentation of where bedbug outbreaks are going on. Will the Oregon Legislature move forward in the next few days on cleaning up exemptions to the law?
As we enter the last month of legislative debate, here’s how public records reform in Oregon is looking, so far, from the vantage of the watchdog press.
Pete Shepherd is a firm believer that nondisclosure can be in the public interest. He has been at the center of Oregon transparency discussions for decades. So who is he?
Americans – along with Europeans – account for 2/3 of world imports of seafood. Here we describe America’s battleplan for keeping seafood legal in the U.S. and helping American consumers avoid being a driver of the $23 billion annual market for illegal seafood.
Black riders face stiffest transit penalty: A study of fare enforcement on TriMet found no disparities last year. But that study didn’t take into account data that show police assigned exclusively to TriMet charge black transit riders with interfering with public transit – a misdemeanor on par with drunk driving – at rates at least 6.4 times those of white riders.
Well, we’ve finally arrived. Transparency season in the Oregon Legislature. Hard to know where it all will lead, but the fact that we got here – and with more proposals in favor of transparency than against it – is at least a good sign for Oregon. Here’s my summary of what’s on the menu, along with the state of the union for each proposal:
Senate Bill 481: This is the offspring of the Attorney General’s Public Records Task Force. It’s potentially the heaviest hitting piece of legislation on the table.
Fake news. It’s not just all over social media, bungling up elections, and poisoning public debate – it’s also a significant issue worldwide. But the good news for us, and for you, our members, is that our audience is key to helping legitimize the work we do.
Data shows prosecutors don’t introduce new racial disparities to the criminal justice system in Multnomah County, but they also don’t reduce them either – not yet. New information shows prosecutors may be on a path to doing so. And that they perhaps have rich opportunity to solve problems when other parts of the system fall short.