Sen. Bonham: How Important is Transparency to You?

By Oregon State Senator Daniel Bonham:

The oath of office is essential, and when I swore to uphold the law and the Constitution – I meant it. I will not sit by and help move along the majority party’s extreme and unconstitutional agenda – especially with their complete and obvious dismissal of the law.

When a bill is introduced, its summary must be clearly understandable, as laid out in the Constitution and subsection 5 of Senate Rule 13.02 and ORS 171.134.

This is to ensure transparency, so laws are not merely crafted by attorneys and those with enough money to afford them. Every Oregonian should have reasonable access to the process.

The Legislative Counsel (LC), is supposed to be nonpartisan legal staff and work for all members in the Oregon Legislature, but instead LC willingly broke the law, under the direction of the Senate President and Speaker of the House, by writing bill summaries that do not meet the readability standards required by law.

Democrats have utilized this same Legislative Counsel (who is theoretically nonpartisan), for their partisan purposes – to provide the opinion that the measure summaries for bills under legislative consideration are “good enough,” with respect to the readability standards. This is what corruption looks like.

Democrats must FOLLOW THE LAW.