Posted inCity Council City of Salem

I urge Salem City Council to rule on Betsy Vega’s qualification to be a Ward 6 city councilor

Here's my open letter, which will become an open email, to the nine members of Salem's City Council. My subject is whether Betsy Vega meets the requirements in the city charter to be a city councilor. *************************************************************** Dear Mayor Hoy and councilors Paul Tigan, Linda Nishioka, Shane Matthews, Deanna Gwyn, Irvin Brown, Mai Vang, Vanessa Nordyke, and Micki Varney: As you're aware, the City of Salem has issued a statement regarding Betsy Vega's eligibility to be on the November 2026 General Election ballot after she was certified as the winner of the Ward 6 city council race in the May…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

Here’s what ChatGPT says about whether Betsy Vega is qualified to be a Salem city councilor

In my previous post I criticized the legal opinion by Eugene attorney Truman Stone of whether Betsy Vega meets the qualifications to be a Salem city councilor following her victory over Ward 6 incumbent Mai Vang in the May 19 primary election. My main concern was that Stone downplayed the language in Section 25 of the city charter that says: A councilor shall have resided in the ward the councilor represents during the 12 months immediately before being elected or appointed to the office. Stone considered that domicile was the correct term for judging whether Vega met that residency requirement,…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

City officials ignored Salem charter in wrongly qualifying Betsy Vega as Ward 6 city councilor

When I learned today that the City of Salem had issued a public statement about a decision that Betsy Vega was qualified to serve as the Ward 6 city councilor despite a challenge by Paige Barton, the campaign manager for incumbent councilor Mai Vang, who Vega defeated, I was surprised. After all, Barton had presented evidence that Vega (photo above)  hadn't lived in Ward 6 for the twelve months prior to the election -- regardless of whether "election" means the May 19, 2026 primary election at which Vega got over 50% of the votes, or the November 3, 2026 general…
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Posted in2026 election City Council

City of Salem hiring Eugene attorney to help with investigation of Betsy Vega’s eligibility to be city councilor

Initially the City of Salem announced that the City Recorder and City Attorney would investigate an allegation that Betsy Vega is ineligible to be a city councilor even though she beat incumbent Mai Vang in the May election. That investigation was expected to be completed by June 22. But yesterday the City of Salem said that the investigation deadline now is July 7 because a Eugene attorney, Truman Stone, has been hired to help the City Recorder. Here's a screenshot of part of an email from the Salem Reporter (I'm a subscriber). This seems like a wise decision. If the…
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Posted in2026 election City Council City of Salem

Betsy Vega’s election as Ward 6 city councilor may hinge on definition of “qualified elector”

Betsy Vega has been certified by Marion County Elections as the winner of the May 19 election for the Ward 6 city council seat, as she got 44 more votes than Mai Vang, the incumbent. But Paige Barton, Vang's campaign manager, has filed a complaint with the City of Salem that asserts Vega may not be qualified to be a city councilor, according to the City Charter. Section 25. Qualifications. (1) An elective city officer shall be a qualified elector under the state constitution and shall have resided in the city during the 12 months immediately before being elected or…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem

City of Salem agrees to investigate Betsy Vega’s qualification to be a city councilor

Excellent news. Today the City of Salem issued a statement (copied in below) saying that city staff will investigate a complaint challenging Betsy Vega's qualification to be a candidate for the Ward 6 city council seat. Though the statement doesn't mention Vega by name, it's clear that she is the subject of the complaint. It's pleasing that City Manager Namburi reversed the ill-considered decision by City Attorney Dan Atchison to not investigate the complaint. As I said in "Salem city officials are refusing to enforce the city's own requirement to be a city councilor," that was a screwy move by…
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Posted in2026 election City Council

Salem city officials are refusing to enforce the city’s own requirement to be a city councilor

We're all familiar with bureaucracies behaving badly. But I expected more from officials at the City of Salem when it comes to enforcing their own requirement for serving as a city councilor, because they're refusing to make sure that Betsy Vega meets the residency requirement for serving as the Ward 6 city councilor. There it is, on the City of Salem web site, on a page titled Elections - Run for Elected City Office. I'll attach a screenshot. The residence requirement for becoming a city councilor is "Live within the city ward candidate seeks to represent 12 months prior to…
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Posted in2026 election City Council

If Betsy Vega didn’t live in Ward 6 for a year before the May 19 election, she is ineligible to be a city councilor

Currently Betsy Vega has a 40 vote lead over incumbent Mai Vang in the Ward 6 Salem City Council race. Since it looks virtually certain that Vega will have gotten more than 50% of the vote when this race is certified by Marion County Elections, seemingly Vega will replace Vang as the Ward 6 councilor next January when her term begins. Seemingly. Not certainly. Because the Salem Reporter has a May 28 story by Joe Siess with the provocative title, "Vega's Ward 6 residency questioned as Salem city council race remains unsettled." Excerpt: State elections officials are reviewing allegations that…
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Posted in2026 election City Council

Looks like progressives have gained one seat on the Salem City Council

Today was the end of the seven-day deadline for mail-in ballots to be returned to the Marion County Elections Office after the May 19 primary election where the races for Salem mayor and four city council seats would be decided if a candidate got over 50% of the votes. As I wrote about on May 20 in "Election for Salem mayor and city council turned out well for progressives, but not perfectly," from the initial results of these five races it seemed virtually certain that Vanessa Nordyke would defeat incumbent Julie Hoy in the mayor race, incumbent Linda Nishioka would…
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Posted in2026 election City Council Vanessa Nordyke

Election for Salem mayor and city council turned out well for progressives, but not perfectly

The races for Salem mayor and city council are nominally nonpartisan, but in reality almost always there are conservative and progressive slates for these offices. So given the extent to which even local politics has become nationalized, every two years control of the city council hinges on whether the election winners tilt more toward the right or left of the political spectrum. Since Oregon's vote by mail allows for ballots to be counted if they are postmarked on or before election day, May 19, there's an unknown number of ballots remaining to be counted. What I've shared below are screenshots…
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Posted in2026 election City Council Julie Hoy

This is important to know about candidates for mayor and city council

I'm a political junkie. I'm addicted to following politics closely. But many people here in Salem aren't. They believe in voting, including in the May 19, 2026 election that likely will decide the races for mayor and four seats on the city council. (While this is a primary election, a candidate that gets more than 50% of the vote in those races wins outright; such will probably happen, given that there are two candidates in each race.) But those people don't have an inclination to dig deep into the qualifications and policy positions of the candidates vying to be mayor…
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Posted inCity Council Julie Hoy

Mayor Julie Hoy keeps on lying as her ethics violation is finalized

There's a lot not to like about Salem Mayor Julie Hoy -- notably including how an Oregon Government Ethics Commission investigation found that Hoy was the ringleader of an illegal secretive scheme to get rid of city manager Keith Stahley that violated numerous provisions of our state's public meetings law. But I'll say this much regarding Hoy: she is consistent... in her lies about her ethics violation. I listed three of her lies in a November 2025 post, "Mayor Julie Hoy lied about not wanting Keith Stahley gone. That's her third lie about Stahley." Lie #1: Hoy claimed that in…
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Posted inCity Council Oregon politics

If you don’t want elected officials doing public business behind closed doors, urge the governor to veto HB 4177

Every legislative session in Oregon features some bad bills that somehow get passed. Then the only remedy is for the governor to veto a bad bill. That's what needs to happen with HB 4177, which seriously weakens Oregon's public meetings law -- as I warned last month in "Really irritating that Oregon legislature may weaken public meetings law that Mayor Hoy violated." A March 11 Oregonian editorial calling for Governor Kotek to veto HB 4177 describes the worst part of the bill: a provision that allows a majority of the members of a public body to meet in secret to…
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Posted inCity Council Julie Hoy Oregon politics

Really irritating that Oregon legislature may weaken public meetings law that Mayor Hoy violated

I'm a proud Democrat, but I'm not shy about criticizing my political party when it does something stupid. Like, being on the verge of passing a bill in the current short session of the Oregon legislature that markedly weakens a prohibition on "serial communications" -- which basically means a governmental body, like the Salem city council, deliberating secretly rather than in a public meeting open to the citizenry. Salem Mayor Julie Hoy was the ringleader of a scheme to use serial communications (individual conversations with members of the city council) so Hoy could force Keith Stahley, the city manager back…
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Posted in2026 election City Council

Once again, city council and mayor candidates in May election are divided into progressive and conservative tribes

In an ideal world, which for sure we don't have, political candidates would be judged on the basis of their unique individual qualifications and not on which political tribe they belong to. Maybe because they don't belong to any tribe, having foresworn membership in the Democratic, Republican, or some other party. But we live in polarizing times. And unlike a parliamentary system, our country has two enduring dominant political parties. So even though nationally unaffiliated voters are 47% of the electorate, with Republicans and Democrats at about 27% each, there's a strong impetus for candidates to identify as progressive or…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Vanessa Nordyke

Creation of REACH makes Vanessa Nordyke’s dream of a Salem mental health crisis team a reality

For quite a few years Councilor Vanessa Nordyke has been working to bring a mental health crisis team to Salem. I've written about her ups and downs in various blog posts: "Setback for Salem mental health crisis response team" (September 24, 2021) Led by Vanessa Nordyke, last June the Salem City Council appropriated $135,000 for a mental health crisis response team similar to the CAHOOTS program that has been a big success in Eugene — where a medic and crisis worker handle about 17% of the police department's call volume, saving about $12 million a year at a cost of…
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Posted inCity Council Julie Hoy

Salem Mayor Julie Hoy is guilty of orchestrating an ethics violation, but has the delusion she did nothing wrong

I've heard that Mayor Julie Hoy attended Trump's Washington D.C. inauguration in January of this year. I'm surprised that she hasn't gotten a job with the Trump administration, because Hoy is fully Trumpian when it comes to refusing to admit obvious wrongdoing. An Oregon Government Ethics Commission investigation found that Mayor Hoy orchestrated an illegal "serial communication" among a majority of the members of the City Council that ran afoul of the Public Meetings Law requirements. Last February Hoy subverted what should have been a public process of deciding whether City Manager Keith Stahley should remain in his position into…
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Posted inCity Council Public Safety

City Council rethinks whether putting convicted murderer on Police Review Board is a good idea

The story of Kyle Hedquist is a good example of how complicated it can be to decide what's right and what's wrong when it comes to the American justice system. Which needs a lot of improving, since the United States has a much higher percentage of the population in prison than other high-income countries, and we do a crappy job of rehabilitating prisoners, given our focus on "lock em' up" punishment. The Marion County District Attorney described Hedquist's crimes after his life sentence was commuted by Governor Kate Brown in 2022 after he served 28 years in prison. The boldfacing…
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Posted inCity Council Julie Hoy Vanessa Nordyke

Salem Mayor Julie Hoy refuses to admit to her ethics violation, while five councilors victimized by Hoy did

The title of a Salem Reporter story by Joe Siess pretty much says it all: "Mayor Julie Hoy stands alone as all councilors concede ethics violation." Excerpt: Three more Salem City councilors who participated in an illegal serial meeting orchestrated by the mayor in February have accepted responsibility for their actions and signed agreements with the state ethics commission. Salem Mayor Julie Hoy stands alone as the only person accused by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission of unethical conduct who has not closed out the matter. She has not responded to the commission to indicate whether she will accept wrongdoing…
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Posted inCity Council Julie Hoy Vanessa Nordyke

Councilors Nishioka and Nordyke admit wrongdoing to Ethics Commission even though Mayor Hoy was the chief wrongdoer

Sadly, this is typical among elected officials these days. Those who have done something mildly wrong admit to it and apologize for the violation. Those who have something majorly wrong refuse to admit it and say there's nothing to apologize for. This appears to be the case here in Salem, where two members of the City Council, Linda Nishioka and Vanessa Nordyke, have told the Oregon Government Ethics Commission that they agree with the commission's finding that they, three other members of the council, and Mayor Hoy engaged in violations of our state's public meetings law last February. A Salem…
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