#MALHUER CITY OREGON COURT RECORDS SERIES#

“Nor could it: the public’s interest is entirely in favor of disclosure of these records.” “MCED has made no showing that disclosure would harm the public interest,” Osoinach wrote in the petition. Osoinach and the Enterprise urged Malheur’s district attorney to order MCED to immediately release the requested records in fully unredacted form and waive all fees imposed by the agency. “I judged that it was going to be a prudent strategic move for us to bring in legal talent to make clear just how seriously we took these matters.” “The local officials had sort of become tone deaf to appeals from a nagging Enterprise,” Zaitz said. The Enterprise challenged the county’s response in two petitions, the second filed by Reporters Committee Local Legal Initiative Attorney Ellen Osoinach in January. The MCED took 85 days to respond to the paper’s records request, producing 65 pages of documents, many of which were unlawfully redacted. When it appeared that $26 million in taxpayer dollars might subsidize a rail shipping center project in Malheur County, the Enterprise requested emails, reports and federal grant applications, among other records, from MCED to determine the project’s financial viability, the public’s return on its investment, and to ensure that “no one behind closed doors was cutting deals to benefit private interests over public interest,” said Les Zaitz, the paper’s editor and publisher.

#MALHUER CITY OREGON COURT RECORDS SERIES#

The Enterprise filed a series of public records requests last October as part of its ongoing investigation into the inherent tension between the public and private roles of an Oregon state legislator involved in economic development projects as both the director of the Malheur County Economic Development Department and the owner of a private development company.

In response to an administrative appeal filed by a Reporters Committee attorney, a district attorney in Oregon has ordered a county economic development department to disclose public records requested by the Malheur Enterprise, an important victory for the newspaper that could help shed light on a multi-million dollar infrastructure project.

Malhuer city oregon court records