City leaders wrongly preventing councilors from attending neighborhood association meetings

Officials at the City of Salem — city attorney, mayor, city manager, maybe others — really need to take the story of Goldilocks to heart. Or the Buddhist middle way. 

Because they've jumped from one extreme that got city officials in hot water (an ethics complaint that I filed, which currently is being investigated by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission), to the other extreme where those officials are putting on ice the ability of a city councilor to attend neighborhood association meetings in their ward.

So because Mayor Julie Hoy and other members of the city council engaged in a prohibited "serial communication" where a quorum (majority) of a governmental body discusses an issue in private that state law says needs to be deliberated about in public, a story in today's Statesman Journal is about how city leaders are preventing city councilors from attending neighborhood association meetings.

This excerpt from the story by Whitney Woodworth and Capi Lynn, "Salem tells city councilors to skip neighborhood meetings over ethics concerns," shows how mistaken City of Salem officials are about what state law requires in this regard.

Susan Myers, executive director of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, contended the commission had not issued any advice or guidance instructing councilors not to speak to reporters or attend neighborhood meetings.

"These statements appear to be rumors stemming from councilors and others misunderstanding the law," Myers wrote in an email to the Statesman Journal. "We are in the process of drafting FAQs to provide additional clarification on issues surrounding serial communications, including these specific issues."

The City Attorney, Dan Atchison, screwed up when he told Mayor Julie Hoy that it would be fine if she spoke with each member of the city council about whether City Manager Keith Stahley should consider resigning. This wasn't fine, because it violated the rule against serial communications.

Now it appears that Atchison has screwed up again, assuming that he is one of the unnamed Salem leaders who is telling city councilors that they can't attend neighborhood association meetings. Obviously there's a big difference between one councilor attending a neighborhood association meeting, and the mayor talking with a majority of the nine-member city council about Stahley's employment status.

I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that officials at the City of Salem who are irritated by the bad publicity they're getting from the Ethics Commission investigation are trying to make it sound like the commission is way off base in its interpretation of state law, going so far as to prohibit city councilors from attending neighborhood association meetings.

Actually it's city officials who are way off base, given that the Ethics Commission hasn't said that there's anything wrong with a councilor attending those meetings. I hate to quote Trump, but those city officials are guilty of spreading fake news. 

This is Or. Admin. Code 199-050-0020 that prohibits serial communications. It seems clear that it doesn't prevent a single city councilor from attending a neighborhood association meeting.

A quorum of the members of a governing body shall not, outside of a meeting conducted in compliance with the Public Meetings Law, use a series of communications of any kind, directly or through intermediaries, for the purpose of deliberating or deciding on any matter that is within the jurisdiction of the governing body.