By Eric Fruits, Ph.D.
Public meetings can be boring, but those meetings are where our elected politicians decide how much they’re going to tax us, how much they’re going to spend, and what kind of regulations they are going to impose on us. That’s why Cascade spends hundreds of hours each year attending and testifying at public meetings throughout the state.
Sometime our elected officials don’t want us to know what they’re up to, and they try to skirt Oregon’s fairly weak public meetings laws. HB 4140 is a step toward better enforcement.
Last week, Eric Fruits, Vice President for Research at Cascade Policy Institute provided testimony to the Oregon House Rules Committee in support of HB 4140.
The testimony provides a first-hand account of outrageous violations of the state’s public meetings law. He presented evidence that Metro, the Portland-area regional government, may have falsified its website to trick voters into thinking it was following the law.
Oregon needs better enforcement of its public meetings laws and Cascade will continue fighting for government transparency.
Click here to read the testimony.
Eric Fruits, Ph.D. is Vice President of Research at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
