Terry J. Harris

Guys, y'all need to follow me over to 🟦-sky where I'm trryjhrrs.

lol #MyXAnniversary

@pederson_angela @ChristineDrazan Lol, your "fixing our roads without paying more taxes" is paying down debt using lottery funds? Come on.

Of course! Are you aware of all the things being prioritized over fixing our roads??? Are you aware of the massively over budget projects? Are you aware of the $1.1Billion ODOT calculation error? The Republicans gave a plan that fixes our roads WITHOUT Oregonians paying more taxes. oregoncatalyst.com/90175-tapeworm…

When politicians prioritize the government’s budget over your family’s, they have lost their way. I’m fighting for Oregonians who cannot afford $5.8 billion in tax hikes and fee increases. There will be another opportunity to testify in Salem this Friday. I’ll have more information so you can sign up and make your voice heard. kgw.com/article/news/p…

@oregoncatalyst Kiss it goodbye Cliff Bentz

Oregon losing its new Congressional seat (chart) dlvr.it/TMY4Nb

@bob4portland This is interesting from the Manual. Looks like the Oregon legislature didn't actually "exempt itself." I've seen other explanations that basically say since you can't sue legislators while they're in session, any open meeting violation can't be enforced. Don't know for sure...

@_tjh_ As in other states, eg.Alaska the legislature exempted itself from the public meetings law. Perhaps because, unlike local governments, they are partisan bodies and the majority caucus might want to meet to set their agenda. Take a look at:. doj.stateor.us/wp-content/upl…

I'm still glitched out of posting over at🦋 so I'll opine to the void briefly over here. This one from Bob will probably get a quick bounce too, because there are no *facts* alleged that they discussed *committee* business in the retreat. (And I'd be surprised if they did.) 1/2

@bob4portland It's another way the law is so dumb - for example, the gang of 6 COULD talk about Governance, because they don't have a quorum on that committee, but they couldn't talk about Transportation. Meanwhile, in Salem, anybody can talk about anything.

@_tjh_ Committee-related council business? We will see.

@bob4portland That's definitely the (dumb) law, but "hard to believe" isn't evidence enough. If they were discussing only full-council business, they're in the clear.

@azcfilm Well, I don't know what the public's expectations are. For example, some countervailing expectations might be that Council needs to get some actual work done. There's also increasing recognition that the open meetings law, as deployed in Oregon, is an impossible constraint.

@_tjh_ I appreciate your take on it Terry, I can say that the complaint itself was several pages long detailing several items and that so far it has not been dismissed by the city. But that's the expectation by the public at this point and there's a growing distrust.

@ericfruits My guess is it was a discussion of the committee structure and meeting schedules etc. Peacock isn't all completely on the same page there, and it's a perfectly fine idea to discuss it amongst themselves. But I'm guessing too. And unless there are facts, a complaint about it fails

@ericfruits (Oh, assuming 🦋 fixes the glitch, I'll be gone soon. This place is pretty broken.) Committee business? I really doubt it. There's a peacock quorum in T&I, Housing, Labor, and Climate committees, but there's not much retreat-worthy *business* there. 1/2

Texas retains a basic open meetings structure while simultaneously *improving* transparency. Mostly, it's a way to allow legislators to actually legislate. You do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them," but Texas has ways of fixing Oregon's open meetings act. 6/6

When I've shown this to Councilors, a few reacted with an "ugh, another website to keep track of" dismissal. It's absolutely illegal under Oregon's current law, but it avoids the weird blurry lines between public meetings and public records laws that are a huge problem now. 5/

I'm glitched out of bsky at the moment, so Twitter, howzabout a look at how another jurisdiction handles the Open Meetings Act serial communications problem. Here's an example from a leading bastion of democracy known as Texas. 🧵

May the ghosts of the good Justices Brennan and Marshall forever haunt the DOGE goons and FedSoc dorks in all the courtrooms throughout the land.

This is obscene. The idea that simply not enforcing valid regulations is unreviewable by courts is like sending all of our environmental, labor, food, health and safety protections to a gulag in El Salvador too. nytimes.com/2025/04/15/us/…