The city of Portland plans to fight a decision by the Multnomah County District Attorney's office that says the city can't keep secret the names of unionized employees.

Mayor Ted Wheeler has asked the rest of the city council to vote Wednesday to authorize the legal battle to keep the employee names private. He did so at the request of the city attorney's office, said spokesman Michael Cox.

Attorney Heidi Brown said they are not taking sides in the argument, which pits the district attorney and his interpretation of public records laws against a city employees union and its contract with the city. The city's attorneys simply want a higher authority, in this case a district court judge, to make the call.

"This presents kind of a unique situation in that we're kind of caught between two different laws," Brown said.

If the City Council approves the proposal, the city will argue that releasing the names would violate the city's contract with Laborer's International Union of North America Local 483 and also violate labor laws.

Earlier this month, the district attorney ordered the city to release the names, saying those reasons are bogus.

District Attorney Rod Underhill's public records order says that the union once argued for the release of names of people who were not in the union and won. That essentially set the precedent for the release of names of people who are on the other side of the fence -- in the union, he wrote.

The city argued, as did the union lawyers, that releasing the names to Ben Straka, who works for the Freedom Foundation and filed a public records request to see the names, would open union members to harassment. The foundation is a Washington-based think tank that wants to minimize the power of unions in government.

Underhill's opinion said that only people who have specific, individual claims about why releasing their names or idenitifying information would violate their privacy can have their information exempted from public records laws.

He also dismissed the claim that the city cannot divulge that information because of the Laborer's 483 contract, saying "the city may not supersede state law by contract."

If the city releases the names and Laborer's International Union of North America Local 483 decides to file a complaint with the state's Employment Relations Board, Brown said she's not sure if an order from the district attorney's office would be sufficient justification for the city's actions, because this circumstance seems to have never come up before.

A circuit court's authority would likely hold more sway.

"We're fine with whatever the court orders us to do," Brown said.

The city would use staff attorneys to argue the case, so it would not incur extra costs to mount the lawsuit. But it could be on the hook to pay the Freedom Foundation's legal bills if Straka wins.

Portland Public Schools is involved in a similar lawsuit. When the district attorney's office ordered the school district to make public the names of all employees on paid administrative leave, the district refused and sued the people who asked for the records: parent Kim Sordyl and journalist Beth Slovic.

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger