Opinion

Public Disclosure Costs Us Another

Tryan Hartill April 9, 2008

Word will be coming out shortly that Bill Harris has resigned from the Clatsop County Planning Commission because of the new disclosure law.

Talking to some of the local Political Critters around town, the general consensus is the disclosure of relatives, the new quarterly reports and the future online availability is just too much. Basically people that have to fill out the new forms (Councilors, Commissioners etc) are doing one of 3 things. Filling out the forms in full, not filling them out correctly, or resigning.

I have a very small family and still will have to include 7 names on my form. I do see a bit of a problem with someone who has to put 15 or even 20 names down to fill the requirements. With that many names on the form, (and soon online) opponents of a quasi-Judicial decision could look up any one of the relatives names and cry foul if they were at all affected by the outcome of the decision. With a 7 member Board you might be looking at 100 possible names. 100 names in a big city doesn’t mean much, but in a place like Gearhart or Warrenton, that is quite a large number of people.

I have a feeling we will see many more resignations around the state. And the press seems to be covering this issue very closely, so we all know when one happens. And we still have not seen the outcome to the quarterly reports, or all of the forms that were filled out wrong and have to be addressed down the road.

1 Comment

On Apr 9, 11:39 AM, Guy wrote:

I wonder if the State plans to verify all the data they get on those forms.  How much will that agency cost us?

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