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In a rare moment of frustration for a typically placid official, Portland City Council President Jamie Dunphy said this week that the state’s serial meetings law is “crippling” the council and causing it embarrassment.
The Oregon Government Ethics Commission’s rules, crafted in response to the passage of a 2023 state law, prohibit an elected official from conferring with a quorum of their colleagues about policy matters outside of the public eye, even if that quorum is created through a chain of emails, text messages or other communications. The rules are so stringent and sweeping, city councilors have previously said, that they inhibit councilors’ ability to meaningfully craft policy before public meetings. (That being said, councilors normally seem to be quite aware of policies before they’re brought publicly to the council.)
“I think that the serial meetings law is crippling this body,” Dunphy said during a June 9 public meeting. “Our inability to know if there is broad consensus among this legislative body before we are in the middle of a public process is leading to moments of embarrassment, moments of lost decorum, and conflict that could have been avoided had we simply been able to have a collegial conversation with our colleagues.”
Dunphy said the law has resulted in a council that’s “missing an enormous step of the legislative process and leading to really bad outcomes and a waste of time to not only councilors and city staff, but for the public.”
A bill passed by the Oregon Legislature this spring but vetoed by Gov. Tina Kotek sought to fix the serial meetings law, but critics largely panned it as an extreme and sloppy overcorrection.
