Court Opinion

ID: 9574121
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:02:33.495179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:07.583730
License: Public Domain

FADELEY, J.,
concurring.
I concur in the decision but wish to emphasize the strong statutory policy mandating disclosure of public records. ORS 192.420 provides: “Every person has a right to inspect any public record of a public body in this state, except as otherwise expressly provided by ORS 192.501 to ORS 192.505.”
A disclosure enforcement action is not the time to be timorous or tentative. The legislative policy is clearly expressed. A public agency’s duty is to disclose unless a statutory exemption unequivocally applies. If the agency is dissatisfied with the range of subjects which the legislature has seen fit to exempt from disclosure, the legislature is the appropriate place to seek a remedy. Independent decisions taken by a public agency, however well motivated, will be at cross purposes with the law declaring the duty to disclose the public’s business to the public.
If a public body denies any person access to a public record, “the burden is on the public body to sustain its action” in any suit to enforce the duty of disclosure. ORS 192.490(1).
*42The “personal information” exemption is for the benefit of the individual, not for the benefit of the public employer who holds the record of that information. Thus the public body must first be “shown” that an unreasonable invasion of privacy of the individual will result from the specific disclosure requested. Jordan v. MVD, 308 Or 442, 781 P2d 1203 (1989). And, as the concurring opinion in Jordan stated, a public agency or body “can be expected to be exacting in their insistence on clear justification for any requested exemption * * 308 Or at 445.
The requirements for a Jordan exemption are not met by a blanket policy adopted by a public body in advance of a personal request for exemption supported by the requestor’s personal showing of unreasonable invasion of privacy. Nor are those requirements met by a request that simply shows that a prospective employee prefers confidentiality to disclosure. Those requirements are not met here.