Editorial – HB 4177
Imagine a hushed conference room, a dinner table with growth-minded landowners and local politicians, or a private group text thread where the future of Hillsboro’s borders is quietly traded for political favors. No public notice is posted, no recording is made, and there is no seat at the table for the taxpayers who will eventually pick up the bill.
This isn’t a scene from a political thriller; it is the “new normal” being codified by Hillsboro’s own Representative Nathan Sosa in House Bill 4177. By creating a massive legal loophole for “information gathering,” this bill effectively hands our local leaders a cloaking device, allowing a full quorum of the City Council or any government body to meet in the shadows with developers and lobbyists (for example), only to emerge later and tell the public: “Nothing to see here—we weren’t deliberating, we were just fact-finding.”
Let’s look at what Sosa’s Bill does to undermine Oregon’s Sunshine Laws, which strictly protect against this sort of back-door dealing.
The “Smoking Gun”: Legalizing the Illegal
Representative Sosa claims this bill “clarifies” the law. In reality, the Bill is legalizing meetings that are currently considered ethics violations. To understand the gravity of this shift, we must look at how the “Sunshine” is being traded for a “Shroud.”
| Feature | Current Law: The “Sunshine” Standard | HB 4177: The “Cloaking” Standard |
| Fact-Finding | PUBLIC. Learning about a data center or land expansion is the first step of deliberation. | PRIVATE. Section 7(n)(D) says the law “does not apply” to gathering information. |
| Group Texts | ILLEGAL. Serial communication (texts/emails) among a quorum counts as a meeting. | LEGAL. The bill removes “serial electronic written communication” from the definition of a meeting. |
| Transparency | MANDATORY. Notice must be given, and minutes or recordings must be made. | OPTIONAL. Because the law “does not apply,” there is no notice, no access, and no record. |
| Accountability | PERSONAL. Officials are personally liable for secret meetings. | PROTECTED. Officials can simply claim they were “fact-finding” under the new ORS 192.690. |
The bottom line: Today, if your City Council meets in a backroom to cut a deal with a developer, they are breaking the law. If HB 4177 passes, they are just “gathering information.” Nathan Sosa is effectively taking a set of actions that are currently illegal and giving them a new, legal name.
The “Information Gathering” Mirage
The most dangerous provision of this bill allows public officials to meet privately to “gather information.” Susan Myers, Executive Director of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission (OGEC), warned in a scathing memorandum: “Much of the information gathering that normally occurs in public meetings… could instead be done privately.”
Under Sosa’s bill, your City Council could meet privately with powerful landowners and political consultants about a project like the failed SB 1586. They wouldn’t have to tell you. They wouldn’t have to take minutes. And journalists—your eyes and ears in the room—would be locked out. By the time the “public” meeting happens, the deal is already baked.
Follow the Money: Who is this Bill For?
We must ask: why would a lawyer and former Chair of the Ethics Commission push for a law that his own former agency says will “erode public trust”? A look at Representative Sosa’s ORESTAR filings provides a clue. Nathan Sosa for Oregon has received tens of thousands of dollars from the legal sector, including $11,000 from the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association PAC.
This is the ultimate insider deal: a law written by a lawyer, funded by lawyers, that creates more work for lawyers. HB 4177 protects the high-paid lobbyists and attorneys who want a private lane for influence, while leaving the public in the dark.
A Fiscal and Ethical Disaster
The Legislative Fiscal Office predicts this bill will cost taxpayers $325,950 this biennium just to manage the confusion it creates. Even more alarming, it creates a structural conflict of interest for the Department of Justice, essentially forcing the state to hire private outside counsel to handle ethics disputes.
Representative Sosa has done some solid work in other areas, but his responses to our concerns on this bill have been predictably evasive, retreating to the word “clarity.” True clarity comes from more disclosure, not less. More transparency, not less.
Opposition Outweighs Support 3.5 to 1-
During the process of passing the Bill, 40-plus written pieces of testimony were submitted.
- All of the support was from Cities and Counties in Oregon – no surprise. It is a politician’s dream to be able to hob-knob, communicate, and work on supposed “information gathering” with the public completely sealed out, having no right to know or see records. This Bill opens Pandora’s Box from the 7th level of hell.
- A great deal of opposition was from journalists and media experts. Like the Herald, they all know that things are already bad enough- we are constantly fighting to gather records and information. This Bill will seal us out even further, and this is bad for the public, taxpayers, and voters.
Here are two pieces of opposing testimony worth reading:
Jed Bladine from ONPA: ” Section 5 would create a list of public issues that members of governing bodies could discuss without application of any part of the Public Meetings Law – no application of rules about notice, public access, actions taken by a quorum, serial communications and much more. Those are dangerously murky waters for public officials serving the interests of citizens who depend on public transparency of government decisionmaking.”
Rachel Smolkin – Oregon Public Broadcasting ~ “Far from adding clarity, the Section 5 carveouts from public meeting laws create a wide new swath of topics and correspondence that are shielded from public meeting requirements entirely. Yet the outer margins remain unclear, and this bill serves as a green light to engage in risky conversations that may readily cross the line. Under current law and guidance, governing boards are advised to be cautious. A meeting convened for a valid purpose may cross the line as it unfolds if it ventures into improper deliberations. By writing a longer list of green-lit topics that are entirely exempt from coverage, many kinds of governing-body communications now visible to the public may go dark. This revision also invites decision-makers to have conversations that could readily turn risky, and set officials up for violations that could have been avoided.”
IF YOU CARE YOU MUST ACT – AND I HAVE TO ASK MEMBERS OF MY PARTY – WHAT IN THE HELL ARE WE DOING? THESE ARE NOT DEMOCRATIC VALUES-
The Call to Action
Governor Kotek has spent her first term promising a more accountable Salem. She now faces a defining test. On one side are the journalists, news publishers, and ethics experts who believe the people’s business should be done in the light. On the other hand are the institutional insiders who find transparency “chilling.”
If this bill is signed into law, the “chilled” parties won’t be the politicians—it will be the citizens of Hillsboro and the rest of Oregon who are left shivering in the dark.
Governor Kotek, do not let the doors of our democracy be locked from the inside. Veto HB 4177.
