EDITOR’S COLUMN: City drops huge fee but fight continues for Bellshaw records

The message seems clear from the people of Salem.

They expect transparency and honesty at Salem City Hall.

So far, they aren’t getting that when it comes to the unusual departure of Steve Bellshaw, a deputy police chief.

As I’ve shared before, the reporting team at Salem Reporter for months has been seeking facts about Bellshaw’s departure. He left under a cloud ­– and with an extra $53,000 in pay.

Ardeshir Tabrizian, our criminal justice reporter, has filed one public records request after another to find out what happened.

Repeatedly, city officials have blocked disclosure, relenting only in the face of legal orders.

Last month, the city stunned us with notice that one set of documents we requested would cost Salem Reporter $4,225.

That’s sizable to any news organization and in this instance, the city’s intent seemed evident. City executives probably figured that a small local news outfit like Salem Reporter would walk away.

In truth, we considered giving up.

But then we thought of you, the people of Salem. We hear regularly from readers that you count on us to watch government, to fight obstruction from government leaders.

We decided to press on and that’s when we asked for your help.

At 7 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 13, I published an Editor’s Column explaining the bill from the city and the limit of our resources. I invited help with donations to our Disclosure Fund.

At 7:08 a.m., the first donation rolled in. Eight minutes.

In the coming hours and days, many more responded to the call for help.

In two days, we covered the city’s bill but donations kept coming in. And so did notes of encouragement to stick with it.

By the time we shut down the campaign, we logged $5,750 in donations from 107 people. And that was in just three days. The sums ranged from $10 to a top giver of $150.

We paid the city’s bill and asked for our records. Not so fast, the city said. It’s going to take up to a month to gather records. These were documents, mind you, that backed up what the city had been saying publicly about the Bellshaw matter. We wanted the records to establish that their statements were accurate.

To help the city, we clarified what we were after. City officials didn’t ask us to do that. We volunteered, hoping to make the task of gathering records easier.

Meantime, we labored for hours on a petition to Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson, contesting the $4,225 bill. Under Oregon law, fees imposed by a government can be challenged as unreasonable. The city concluded the burden to gather the records outweighed the public interest in the documents, and wouldn’t waive or even reduce the fee. We found that unreasonable.

Then, the citizens spoke up with donations and we submitted our petition to the district attorney.

Before the district attorney could act, the city last week notified Salem Reporter that the fee would be dropped and the $4,225 refunded.

That never would have happened without the people of Salem rising up to push back on the city’s obstinance.

The battle for transparency is far from over.

You’ll read soon about the city’s latest effort to conceal records in this matter.

And you’ll hear for the first time from Steve Bellshaw, through his attorney. Let’s just say he isn’t praising the city’s handling of this matter.

Meantime, we will file yet more petitions with the district attorney, seeking to force the city to turn over other records.

And we’ll safeguard the Disclosure Fund, now a meaningful resource for us to overcome future government costs and legal obstacles. You have equipped us to soldier on, seeking the truth about government on your behalf, to get you facts to judge whether your local public officials are honestly and competently doing their jobs.

Les Zaitz is editor and CEO of Salem Reporter. Email: [email protected].