Some local, Oregon governments followed questionable practices with their coronavirus relief fund money. But instead of clearly identifying which local governments they were, the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office let them off the hook. It did not identify them in a new report.

How are Oregonians supposed to hold their local governments accountable for sloppy practices if they don’t know who did it? We asked and found the response from the state’s audits division unsatisfying.

“We generally try to avoid naming names in our audit reports or communications,” wrote Laura Fosmire, a spokeswoman. “The goal of including them was to provide illustrative examples, not to be punitive or shame any particular jurisdiction. That said, the identities of these jurisdictions are, of course, public record, and anyone may submit a records request wanting to see those records.”

So let’s get this straight. The agency that Oregonians trust to track how well money is being spent and how well government is working believes Oregonians should have to jump through extra hoops to find out which agencies are messing up? What kind of vision for transparency and accountability is that?

We did make a public records request for the identities of many of the entities, including the following:

• The city that asked for as much payroll reimbursement as cities five and six times its size.

• The three governments that asked for full reimbursement of public safety and public health personnel, as if everything they were doing was related to COVID-19.

• Another government claimed “100% of parks and recreation employee pay as COVID-19-related with no separate time tracking and little documentation to support the duties performed.”

And there were more. We made the records request on Thursday. As of our deadline for this page, we had not received the information.

The ability of Oregonians to hold their governments accountable should not be shrouded in fog.