SPONSOR: W. Harbaugh, Department of Economics

BACKGROUND: Barack Obama's first official act as President was to issue a memorandum to federal agency heads regarding openness and transparency, saying in part:

The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears .... All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure ... Disclosure should be timely. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/FreedomofInformationAct/

The objective of this motion is to implement procedures to ensure that UO follows similar principles in responding to requests for information from UO faculty, staff and administrators. While Oregon law establishes basic procedures, and states that ''Every person has a right to inspect any public record of a public body in this state, ...'' (ORS 192.420) in practice it is often difficult to get public records from UO.

As an example of why new procedures are needed, I refer to recent efforts to understand why UO's Indirect Cost Return (ICC) or federal overhead rate was recently cut from 48% to 42%. The ICC is added to federal grants and is used to support faculty research at UO. The decrease in the rate costs UO research efforts about $2 million per year and will soon lead to cuts in returns to departments and likely to reductions in start up offers as well. In September I asked UO General Counsel Melinda Grier's office for 3 documents explaining the reasons for the cut:

1. The UO proposal to the Program Support Center, the part of the Department of Health and Human Services that sets the ICC rate for the NIH, NSF, and other agencies.
2. The Program Support Center response, explaining their reasons for lowering the rate.
3. UO's contract with Maximus, the consulting company that helped prepare UO's proposal to the Program Support Center.

Ten days later I received a response from her office saying that they would not release these documents unless I paid them $173.11. When I asked for an explanation of this fee, I was told - after another delay - that I could not see this explanation unless I paid the General Counsel's office $2.70. These sorts of responses are not consistent with openness, transparency, or shared governance.

MOTION:

The Senate will appoint a three person "Openness Committee" from tenured faculty, with the following charge:

When a faculty, administrator, or staff member feels that a request for information or public records to the UO Counsel's Office or another administrative unit has been unreasonably delayed, incompletely answered, or believes that fees have been charged despite a general interest within the university in the issue, that person can bring an appeal before the Openness Committee. The committee shall quickly review, via email whenever possible, any such appeals and make a recommendation to the administrative unit or General Counsel. The recommendation will be based on the principles described in President Obama's memorandum.

The Senate requests that the administration state that it will follow the recommendations of this committee unless the General Counsel expeditiously provides a detailed written explanation for why legitimate considerations prohibit the records or information from being provided.

The Senate President will fill this committee by soliciting applications from the faculty, and if more than three applicants are received the Senate will vote on the membership by email. This process will be started on passage of this motion and be completed by the next Senate meeting. In future years the committee selection process will begin on the anniversary of the date of the passage of this motion.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

Minor. Oregon law already requires that UO respond to public records requests. (See the Oregon Attorney General's Guide to Public Records and Meetings, available online at http://openuporegon.com.) At times the UO GC office clearly spends more time making estimates of the cost of providing documents than it would cost to just provide the documents. Appeals and petitions to the Oregon DOJ require further time and expense by the GC's office. By providing an intermediate step before DOJ appeals, this motion may well save the GC's office time, freeing their limited resources for more constructive pursuits.

Notice of motion has been given by Professor Bill Harbaugh for action at the 02 December 2009 meeting of the UO Senate.

1. Email to the Senate Rules Committee.
2. Archival copy of http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/FreedomofInformationAct
3. Archival copy of http://openuporegon.com
4. Email from Senate President Gilkey to the Senate Rules Committee.
5. Email from Senate President Gilkey requesting information concerning recent use of public information requests.
6. Email 20 November 2009 from P. Gilkey to the Senate Rules Committee Re US09/10-7 attaching Information received from the General Counsel's Office concerning this motion.