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Shasta Kearns Moore, left, presents Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum with the Oregon Territory SPJ Chapter's annual First Freedom Award. The First Freedom Award recognizes a non-journalist who has advocated for open government in Oregon. (Samantha Swindler/Staff)

(Samantha Swinder/Staff)

Last year, The Oregonian/OregonLive requested an electronic database of property recorded into evidence by the Portland Police Bureau. The estimated cost of making those public records public?

$1,042,450.20.

It was a bit out of our price range.

Instead, we paid for a narrower subset of information about rape kits. There were thousands of untested kits in Portland Police custody despite the bureau's assurances following the 2001 murder of a 14-year-old girl by a serial rapist that it would regularly test forensic evidence from sexual assaults. Data from our records request helped tell the story.

When news of the backlog was made public, lawmakers passed Melissa's Law, requiring police agencies to establish protocols for testing rape kit evidence.

This is what can happen when journalists shine a light on the workings of government, but it only happens when we have access to public records - the documents, emails and digital data created and maintained by public employees using your tax dollars.

And this story is not an anomaly. Outrageous quotes and unnecessary delays for public records happen all the time, at every level of government across Oregon.

"I got a $62,000 estimate to search emails by keywords for four people," reporter Rob Davis of The Oregonian/OregonLive said during a recent hearing. "That is the agency telling us that they don't want to bother."

When Willamette Week reporter Nigel Jaquiss asked the Department of Human Services for basic records related to troubled foster care agency Give Us This Day, he said "it took 140 days for DHS to give me the first piece of paper on that request."

That happened only after he complained to the Oregon Attorney General's office.

"A few hundred dollars for one record, a few thousand for an email search. We all know this is not the true cost of this service," wrote Sara Roth with KGW. "The cost is not only confusing, but it forces us to choose which stories to cover. I know we haven't uncovered stories just because the records request was too expensive."

In my free time, I serve as president of the Oregon Territory Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, a national organization that supports ethical journalism and a free press. Last week, our chapter presented Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum with the annual First Freedom Award, which recognizes a non-journalist who has worked toward government transparency.

It was a hopeful gesture, given because of the steps she has taken and the promises she has made regarding public access to information.

In September, Rosenblum's office created the Public Records Law Reform Task Force, which will propose changes during next year's legislative session to the state's notoriously flimsy public records laws. The reporters' stories mentioned throughout this column were either shared during a public records hearing in May or emailed to the task force.

Oregon received an "F" grade from the Center of Public Integrity's 2015 State Integrity Investigation. We ranked 42nd in the nation. Our neighbors California and Washington ranked second and eighth, respectively.

One problem is that costs for Oregon public documents can vary wildly, since government agencies can charge for more than just the copying of records. They can charge for staff time to procure them and attorney fees to review them, with little oversight as to how fees are determined.

This allows costs to skyrocket. The $1 million quote from Portland Police was based on the bureau's claim that it would need to review more than a half-million individual cases to see if they were ongoing investigations, allowed to be exempt from disclosure.

Apparently a sort button doesn't exist in their data system.

And there is little recourse for a journalist -- or a citizen -- to question those cost estimates.

The wait for documents is also a problem. Current law only requires records requests be filled in "a timely manner," which as Nigel's experience illustrates, is meaningless. The task force has tentatively proposed a law change requiring government agencies to fulfill most requests within 10 business days, which falls closer in line with laws in other states.

But Oregon stands out nationally for its staggering number of exemptions to disclosure law -- more than 500. These include exemptions allowing government agencies to withhold information about underground storage tanks, complaints about judges, boating accidents and death certificates.

Even agencies that want to be transparent are confused by the current system, which can lead to delays and high costs. At worst, Oregon's convoluted law can be used to thwart disclosure and purposefully delay the release of information. There are no penalties when an agency violates the records law.

Of course, this issue isn't only about journalists. These are the public's records and the average citizen who has tried to get government documents has likely faced similar roadblocks.

But I mention the frustrations of my colleagues at other media outlets because this issue is bigger than our turf wars. In the battle for public information, journalists are outnumbered, fighting an ever-growing Goliath with an ever-shrinking slingshot. Nationally, there are now five public relations professionals to every one journalist. Many of these PR folks work for the same government agencies that can afford communications people but can't respond to information requests in a timely and cost-effective manner.

As Shasta Kearns Moore with the Portland Tribune noted, when these agencies start to report their own news and hinder efforts by investigative journalists, we are essentially left with state-run media.

That does not bode well for the future of the republic.

-- Samantha Swindler

@editorswindler / 503-294-4031

sswindler@oregonian.com