Elected officials often object to media who do not act as stenographers for their press releases or public speeches by refusing interviews or spreading rumors or just generally behaving like asses. Stufflebean, for example, wouldn’t answer questions from me after awhile, even though I always quoted him directly and cited his own press releases and documents for my posts during the road department layoffs and the recall, presumably because he looked less than stellar as a result.
Well the Coast Lake News in Lakeside is running into the same problem. The weekly paper, believing it has a responsibility to the thousand readers, takes seriously the job of reporting on the city matters and the local government. The Coast Lake News, diligently doing its job, broke the story that counselor Fred Carleton had crafted a city ordinance adopted by the council that violated the fourth amendment.
Lakeside rightly rescinded the ordinance and should have thanked the paper for doing their job before a big civil rights lawsuit bankrupted the city. Instead, an embarrassed Mayor Pro-Tem Rod Schilling and a red faced Carleton have decided to take an adversarial position with the paper, apparently encouraging staff not to release public records and tonight not allowing the paper to sit in on an executive session that media would normally be admitted to.
The paper was forced to file a petition with District Attorney, Paul Frasier. When the city failed to provide any explanation as to why Coast Lake News could not have a copy of council minutes, Frasier ordered Lakeside to release city council minutes and gave them a lecture on Oregon Public Records Laws.
Apparently, vexed and disturbed they cannot do as they please while conducting the people’s business, Schilling and Carleton had this to say when the paper tried to attend the executive session
Schilling said “no” – Editor, Jessica Lloyd-Rogers, asked why. Counselor Fred Carleton waffled, but when asked again why the media was being excluded, he replied, “…the city doesn’t
recognize the paper,” and said Coast Lake News was “not a real
newspaper under state guidelines”. Refusing to cite any ordinances or statutes at first, when pressed Carleton referred to a 2008 matter involving a blogger and the city of Lake Oswego and said, “I don’t know who you are”. Schilling said emphatically, “you are not media”.
Carleton has been interviewed by the paper, Coast Lake News has been at every City Council meeting.
Last month, Carleton was present when, during public comments, Naomi Parker, currently a candidate for City Council, held up a copy of the newspaper and asked the Mayor Pro Tem Rod Schilling and the Council to stop playing games and recognize that “Coast Lake News is a real newspaper and we need it in this community.”
City Hall, Schilling and other Councilors have had a contentious relationship with the paper since August 2009 when the paper printed a memo written by Councilor Chrysta Swift that proved she had lied to the community during the regular council meeting. At that meeting, Swift called several community members “liars”, told at least one person to “sit down and shut up” and claimed “I have never lied in my
life.” The morning after the meeting, a copy of the memo, which verified the citizen concerns, was delivered anonymously to the paper. After ascertaining its legitimacy, the newspaper wrote a front page
story featuring the memo wording in its entirety.
Well, one thing for sure, the year old weekly paper definitely qualifies as ‘media’. Carleton and Schilling are behaving like school boys caught on the playground in flagrante. Carleton should be embarrassed. He is paid, presumably, to provide solid legal advice to the city but he doesn’t appear to understand the most rudimentary principles of open access or the US Constitution. He is counsel to Bandon as well, although there have been rumblings that may not continue…