Oregon Public Broadcasting

How do you hold politicians accountable?  One way is to prevent or expose conflicts of interest.

To do that, the Oregon legislature passed a sweeping ethics package last year.  But now lawmakers say they’ll revisit the issue in their next session.

This after a slew of resignations by officials in small Oregon communities.  Some of those officials gave lawmakers a piece of their mind at a hearing in Pendleton Wednesday.  Correspondent Chris Lehman was there and filed this report.

Island City Mayor Dale Delong has a question.

Dale Delong:  “What does my 85-year-old mother-in-law in Biloxi, Mississippi have to do with my ethics?”

Yet starting this year, Mayor Delong has to list his mother-in-law’s name along with a dozen or more other relatives on an annual economic interest statement.  He chose to do so.

More than 200 of his small-town Oregon political colleagues did not.  That includes Marc Stauffer, the former chair of the Planning Commission in Enterprise.

Stauffer says when he learned about the new disclosure requirements; he called his relatives to see if it was okay to list their names.

Marc Stauffer:  “They systematically down the line, all seven children said ‘No, we don’t want our names there.’  So I was left a choice:  Do I serve the needs of my community, or do I betray my family.  I chose to step down.”

Invasion of privacy is one issue.  But small-town officials also feel like they’re being punished for volunteering.

They now have to fill out quarterly reports outlining gifts and financial reimbursements. And while they know their personal information becomes a part of the public record, they don’t want that info put on the internet.  

Even some state lawmakers are concerned.  Republican Representative Cliff Bentz is worried that the spate of resignations will spiral out of control in his sprawling eastern Oregon district.

Cliff Bentz: “These people are horribly concerned because there’s a very small pool of people that serve. And if we make these situations challenging by having to disclose many things that they have a hard time understanding the reason for, we reduce that pool even further.”

There’s no evidence that government services in rural Oregon have ground to a halt.

In fact, Oregon’s ethics laws mirror those of other states to a large degree.  But Karl Kurtz of the National Conference of State Legislatures says Oregon goes further than most by requiring volunteer members of local city councils and planning commissions to cough up the same info as say, a State Senator.

And he says having to list all of your in-laws is another Oregon twist.

Karl Kurtz:  “The purpose of this is understandable, in that when you take on a public responsibility whether it’s actually elected or appointed, you do have to give up some of your anonymity and your privacy.  The question that’s a hard one to judge is when does it go too far and get into peoples’ private lives.”

Scores of small town officials in Oregon say the law does go too far.  Ron Ormond is Mayor of Butte Falls, population 400.  He says you don’t need intrusive ethics laws in a town where everybody knows each other.

Ron Ormond:  “If you’re gonna have a crooked politician, you’ll have one.  And in the city of Butte Falls, he’s gonna stick out like a sore thumb.”

That message seems to be getting through to state lawmakers.  Portland Democratic Representative Chip Shields commented after listening to three hours of complaints. 

Chip Shields. “What I’ve heard out here is that things are different in rural Oregon, that they might not have the same problems that are around in Salem or some of the bigger places. And I think we’re going to take that to heart when we go revise and look at the ethics laws again in 2009.”