The fall of John Kitzhaber from Oregon’s highest elected office resulted from reporters seeking public records — and what those records revealed. But the weakness of the state’s sunshine law kept valuable information from the public eye until after Kitzhaber won an unprecedented fourth term in November.

Judson Randall is president of Open Oregon, a 20-year-old charitable organization dedicated to helping Oregonians exercise their right to public information. “Oregon has a major flaw in its public records law,” he said. “It does not put a timeline on a response from a public agencies to a request for records.”

Willamette Week’s Nigel Jaquiss requested documents about Kitzhaber and Cylvia Hayes in July 2014. The paper received them months later. That delayed the newspaper’s publishing of damaging stories that showed what looked like Hayes peddling influence in the governor’s office, and how much Kitzhaber may have been involved.

The law — Oregon Revised Statutes 192.410 to 192.505 — requires agencies to provide records in a “reasonable amount of time.” Randall said the Oregon Court of Appeals has found seven to 14 days is reasonable, but requests sometimes take months, and there are no penalties for dragging feet.

Lee van der Voo, a staffer at InvestigateWest, reports on the status of Oregon public records access on her blog Redacted. She also said the law needs timelines, and 72 hours should be enough time to respond to most requests and give a timeline for a response.

How long an agency takes to respond can depend on the number and kinds of records someone seeks, as well as the government body that has the information. The East Oregonian on Dec. 10, 2014, asked several local governments for names and ranks of police officers and firefighters, each employee’s salary and what the city actually paid each. Hermiston, for example, emailed the information the next day; Pendleton took until Dec. 15 to provide most of records; Milton-Freewater sent complete information Dec. 15. Others took longer, for reasons that include the records holder was absent to take care of family.

Civil servants are not always to blame for delays. Voo said Oregon’s public records law is fraught with 478 exemptions and harsh penalties for people who violate the exemptions. She said she would feel paralyzed if she was in the position of deciding if a records request violated the law or not.

That’s one reason she helped develop an online database, also called Redacted, that searches for exemptions. Type in “corrections officer,” for example, and the app reveals 15 possible exemptions.

Agencies use exemptions to deny access to records. The Hermiston School District, for example, will not release video showing a possible confrontation between teacher Webster Castaneda and a middle school student during a basketball practice in late 2014. The district stated the record fell under OR 192.501 (12), an exemption for “personnel discipline action, or materials or documents supporting that action.”

The Morrow County School District in late 2014 cited exemptions when the EO sought information related to a coach, including the coach’s salary. The district refused to release even that, and per the law the EO appealed the denial to Morrow County District Attorney Justin Nelson. He told the school district some of the information requested was exempt but other information, such as the salary, were clearly public records.

Voo said the Redacted app allows records seekers to find those exemptions up front and plot a better course toward what they are after. That can cut down on the back-and-forth with agencies to hash out details.

She also described the state of access to public records in Oregon as “abysmal.” She is not alone. The Center for Public Integrity’s 2012 State Integrity Investigation rated Oregon a C- for risk of corruption. Of 14 graded categories, only one received an F: public access to information.

“I think every reporter should be storming the capital with a pitchfork right now,” Voo said.

Government also uses high fees to block access to records. Voo was part of former Oregon Attorney General John Kroger’s task force in 2010-11 to make Oregon more transparent. She said she heard several cases of agencies wanting upward of $100,000 to provide public records. For three years The Mail Tribune newspaper in Medford battled the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in court for copies of concealed-weapons permits. The sheriff’s office lost, but still wants $18,000 to provide the records.

Oregon’s law allows public bodies to recoup the cost to provide records, but not make a profit. In the pre-digital age that meant hard copies and material costs, but Voo said that today’s fees seem more like leftovers used to generate revenue and dissuade people from requesting records.

Randall questioned why public agencies should be able to charge to provide records when clerks are already getting paid a taxpayer-funded salary. An agency may want $25 an hour to provide records, he said, but doubted the person doing that work was getting paid that well.

Recently, Umatilla County charged the East Oregonian $30 an hour for staff to fulfill a large records request. Pendleton wanted $54 an hour to provide the salary information but then backed off after the EO revealed Hermiston did it for free.

Umatilla County also charges 25 cents a page for paper copies, while the actual paper and ink are closer to a cent or two. And Umatilla County Circuit Court charges 25 cents per page for copies of court documents — even digital copies. The court, though, allows you to take digital photos of the documents for free. That’s better than Clackamas County Circuit Court, which bans taking digital pics of documents. And Marion County Circuit Court charges $3 per request for email documents and 20 cents per page for someone to scan documents first.

Randall said Oregon has a need for public records education in the state. Special districts, for example — such as water or fire districts — serve vital roles at the local level. But they often do not realize they are subject to Oregon’s public records law. An online course from the state could be a benefit to both record-seekers and record-keepers.

Oregon’s new Gov. Kate Brown took office in the wake of the scandal that forced Kitzhaber to resign. She proposed legislation to audit the state’s public records process. Voo said the system does not need another study to show what is not working.

“We’ve known what the problem has been for years,” Voo said.

Randall said reporters should mark their calenders for next February to check on the results of that study — if there are any.

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Contact Phil Wright at pwright@eastoregonian.com or 541-966-0833.

UPDATED: This story was corrected to include current employment information for Lee van der Voo and to clarify two comments she made.