Hello, fellow freedom lover!

December has been an "anniversary" month for me at Freedom Foundation. It was December of 2014 when I submitted my initial public records request to Oregon's DHS requesting names and addresses of home care workers in Oregon. At the time, it was public record. We at Freedom Foundation were completely open with our plans for that information. We were going to inform every single one of those folks their newly found rights under the Supreme Court Decision from the summer of 2014, Harris v Quinn, that allowed those people to 100% opt out of their union membership and dues. That decision granted "Right to Work" for them, and we believe they should know that.

You'll remember that the request was stalled by DHS intentionally. A law was quickly inked, creating an exemption for the addresses of those folks. The Oregonian uncovered in December 2015 that there was collusion all the way to the governor's desk to keep that information from being disclosed. Our governor colluded to prevent citizens from knowing their Constitutional rights. She received direct orders from SEIU to not disclose that information to us. SEIU knew exactly what we would do, and the harm it would create in their coffers. The governor obeyed.

A little over a year ago, Oregon's Attorney General's office formed a "Transparency Task Force" to address the over 550 public records exemptions that bog down transparency. Since I managed to create one of those exemptions with my request, I attended almost every meeting.

The final meeting took place during our recent ice storm. After a long year of reading through exemptions, discussion, categorizing, and more discussion, there would be no addressing of exemptions. Instead, the AG and governor, declared they would be putting forward legislation this spring to create a new position that would be the "public records advocate". Long story short, this position is a governor's appointee for the purpose of watching government -- under her control, no one else's.

I predicted and published over a year ago in The Oregonian, this task force was simply created to give the veneer of transparency to a governor who is very transparency challenged. This new position is just an extension of that veneer. There would be no meaningful reforms that actually kept government accountable.

Yesterday The Oregonian published a guest column I wrote on this ridiculous dance that resulted in simply growing more government.

Click here to read it.

Thank you for your ongoing, strident support of freedom. We have done much in the last two years to drive the message that Oregon is transparency challenged and to continue to press our leaders to account for their ridiculous policies and postures. Your support has supported these efforts and so much more. The sky is the limit. A more free Oregon is on the horizon.

We believe the only path to freedom is achieved when the relationship between the liberal left and labor unions is dissolved.

We won't stop. We press on the gas every day. Join us. Click on our website listed below. You can sign up on the lower part of the page to receive our weekly email. You can click in the upper left corner to give a tax deductible donation as the year comes to a close.

Happy New Year. Let's make 2017 one for the books!

Blessings,

Anne Marie Gurney
Oregon Director | Freedom Foundation
AGurney@FreedomFoundation.com
cell 503-901-5635 l ofc 503.951.6208 | PO Box 18146 Salem, OR 97305
FreedomFoundation.com

The central point in all of this is that Metro and TriMet are failing to produce their vision, intentions and objectives. They are covering up the failure and advancing more of it through perpetual propaganda.

Metro has been asked numerous times to reveal the cost ot date of the $3 Billion SW Corridor Light Rail planning. We now know why they have refused. Much like the CRC, they have no idea or intention of doing so.

This new audit (below) by the independently elected Metro auditor addresses the gross mismanagement by Metro. Yet says not a single work about the most costly current capital project expenditure, Light Rail planning. Planning that is devouring many millions with $176 million in future federal flex recently committed to spend planning transit capital projects. No cost to date has been or is available.

http://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/Capital%20Project%20Planning%20Audit_0.pdf

There was inconsistent information reported about the status and cost-to-date of capital projects during the year. This made it difficult to monitor projects. Information about capital projects was supposed to be provided in the secondand fourth-quarter financial reports to Metro Council.

No information was reported in some quarterly reports for some of the projects we reviewed.

It takes just a little bit of reading to grasp how severely Metro is out of control. As someone else says, it's "huge".

The punch line first: The cumulative detriment of such comprehensive government recklessness is responsible for much of the region's waste and worsening gridlock and housing crisis.

I have been hammering Metro to reveal the cost of planning the SW Corridor Light rail for at least least two years. In the middle of that span ODOT's region 1 manager Jason Tell warned the SW Corridor Steering committee that the projects could turn out to be as costly as the CRC and end up with the same result. That concern was omitted from Metro's reports on the project and never reported in the media. Jason Tell (soon after his warning) left ODOT to work for Parson's Brinkerhoff (light rail engineering firm ) and is now an advocate for the same project.

Clackamas County Chair John Ludlow also repeatedly requested the cost to date for planning the $3 billion light rail project and got no numbers in return. It may be that Metro and TriMet are nearing CRC levels of expenditure.

These chaotic Metro capital projects spending practices (below) exacerbate the impact of their planning practices. Former Metro Auditor reported that Metro does nothing to measure the effectiveness of neither their transportation or land use planning . Consider how derelict this is. There is no reliable tracking of spending or merit in what they are doing with the money. Not surprising, the former Metro auditor also reported that Metro excessively spends the bulk of their public involvement & communication budget on feeding the public advocacy for their agenda vs gathering what the public wants etc.

In short, while failing to track what they spend and do, they are propagandizing on how important it is what they do. Here are the 3 previous audits:

1. Metro does NOT track or want to face the effectiveness of their transportation planning strategies. http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212993/view
2. Metro does not track the effectiveness of their costly Transit Oriented Development program. http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212992/view
3. Metro's communication is lopsided advocacy with staff free to choose what suits their advocacy. http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212480/view

This audit evaluated the effectiveness of Metro’s efforts to engage and learn from the public about regional policy choices.

Capital Project Planning: Strengthen management environment
November 2016
A Report by the Office of the Auditor

http://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/Capital%20Project%20Planning%20Audit_0.pdf

The purpose of this audit was to determine if capital planning controls provided reliable (complete and accurate) and transparent information about projects.

Metro needs to improve its project management capability to better manage the scope, schedule and budget of capital projects. Spending on some projects did not go as planned. Some projects exceeded approved budgets and others moved forward without required planning and approval. We found that policies and procedures were inconsistently applied among departments, funding sources, and project types. This reduced the accuracy, completeness, and transparency of project planning and reporting. We were unable to determine the approved budgets for some projects. Annual budget amounts had not been established in either document for some projects. Budget amounts differed between the two documents.

That meant that two budgets had been approved for the same project in some cases. Without a baseline budget, it would be very difficult to determine if projects were on track. Planning documents for some projects were not complete, which may have contributed to the uncertainty about budget amounts. Some project plans had been completed but not signed by the appropriate authority, which should have prevented spending on them. We were told some projects did not require these forms because they were routine or ongoing projects. It was not clear who had the authority to make those decisions. Even when planning documents were signed they did not appear to be used as intended.

Take Back Our Republic is a relative newcomer having formed in late 2014. It's a non-partisan, non-profit focused on education around campaign finance reform at both the national level and in support of state initiatives. I became aware of the group because the Executive Director is John Pudner, the man who managed the campaign for Dave Brat when he upset Rep. Eric Cantor in 2014. Mr. Pudner is known for winning campaigns with modest budgets (sometimes referred to as the "Moneyball" manager of campaign finance), and is taking the expertise learned on the campaign trail to lead this organization.

Our focus in 2017 will be on gaining conservative support for campaign finance reform, creating an open-source campaign playbook to help candidates defeat big money opponents, to build membership bases in all states who can deliver on reform referenda where needed, to continue efforts on foreign contributions (see HR4177), and introducing individual tax credits for political giving (much like Oregon's), among other issues.

If you'd like to join the team, formally or informally, and become more involved in any efforts to reform campaign finance law in Oregon or at the national level, please review the web site and feel free to contact me for more information on how to participate further.