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12/12/12 update: County DA calls Geller to the office to explain his redactions

12/12/12 update: Lane County Chief Deputy DA Patricia Perlow has asked for a two week extension to respond to my petition on Geller’s redactions, which I’ve said yes to:

From: PERLOW Patty Subject: RE: PR Petition for documents on UO General Counsel response to PR requestDate: December 12, 2012 10:33:16 AM PST
To: [ ]
Cc: GARDNER Alex R , Kron Michael Michael C , David Hubin , Randy Geller , doug park , Lisa Thornton  

Mr. [ ],

I am requesting a two week extension to issue the Order related to your request.  I have been researching the matter and conferring with an Oregon DOJ attorney and I cannot get an adequate Order issued by the deadline today.  I expect I can have the opinion written by the middle of next week, but am asking for two weeks to allow for any unexpected surprises in my schedule.

Thank you for your consideration.

Patty Perlow

Patricia W. Perlow Chief Deputy Lane County District Attorney’s Office 

12/5/2012. See updates below. Those of you who free-rode on donations for this PR request will hold your manhoods cheap, whilst any speaks who has contributed to the UO Matters public records fund. It’s epic.

Six weeks ago I sent Randy Geller a public records request for

“copies of any UO contracts and invoices for legal advice or consulting assistance related to the attempt to create a UO faculty union”

After the usual delays I raised $240 in part from readers, and got back some heavily redacted documents. So I filed a petition with Lane County District Attorney Alex Gardner:

… As you can see these documents are heavily redacted. Almost completely redacted. Virtually nothing of substance is not redacted. Only a a few dollar totals and randomly sprinkled common words are not redacted. UO did not provide any explanation for any of these redactions. 

Therefore, this is a petition asking you to: 

a) order UO to waive the fees for these records under the argument that they are in public interest, or order UO to provide an explanation for their denial of the fee waiver request, 

b) order UO to provide unredacted versions of these public records, or explain the reasons for their redactions,  

as I believe the AG’s interpretation of Oregon PR law requires. 

Thank you for your assistance with this petition, …

From the DA’s office to Randy Geller:

Based upon the attached record, it is apparent that the University is relying upon the attorney/client privilege in redacting the emails provided to Professor [ ].  I would like to schedule an appointment to meet with you to confirm that the records at issue are in fact exempt from disclosure and that the redaction is appropriate.  Please let me know when you are available. 

Uh, I don’t know what you mean, Occifer. My GC Emerita’s magic marker must have sprung a leak, hic:

Full files for Harrang, Long, Gary and Rudnick here, and for Curiale, Hirschfeld and Kraemer here.
For a comparison of redactions, here’s another invoice from the same HLGR firm, obtained via a public records request to a competent general counsel who follows state law, Mark Pilliod of Deschutes County. No redactions. (While Geller and Hubin charged our readers $235.88 for the Rudnick invoices, Mr. Pilliod waived fees, on the basis of public interest. And he sent the invoices within a few days of the request, not 5 weeks later.)

And here’s yet another HLGR invoice, obtained from a public records request to the Oregon Department of Justice – note the complete descriptions of work, from the same Sharon Rudnick that Geller hired to fight the faculty union. (And a few from Dave Frohnmayer too.) The DOJ also provided these documents at no charge. These documents are from a public records case where Randy wrote this letter defending HLGR’s efforts to double their charge to the state’s taxpayers to $864,000.

18 Comments

  1. Anonymous 12/06/2012

    … All hell shall stir for this.

    Please say it’s so. Please let it be so?

  2. Anonymous 12/06/2012

    But no living man am I! You look upon a woman.

  3. Anonymous 12/06/2012

    Take heed how you awake our sleeping sword of war.

  4. UO Matters 12/06/2012

    His redactions shall savour but a shallow wit.

  5. Lit 101 12/06/2012

    Do economists read any literature except Shakespeare and Tolkien? Just curious.

  6. Anonymous 12/06/2012

    And? details? This is one of the most interesting posts in a while……

  7. Awesome0 12/06/2012

    I recently read Hungergames trilogy. Not sure about the economist part though.

  8. Anonymous 12/07/2012

    BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. This redaction is hilarious!

  9. awesome0 12/07/2012

    The perfect Christmas gift this holiday seasons, Madlibs: Geller Edition.

  10. Anonymous 12/07/2012

    Do I see another apology letter in Geller’s future? A framed set of two such letters would go nicely in the JH lobby.

  11. Anonymous 12/07/2012

    There has to be a UO Matters coffee cup in that somehow, but it would have to be a 20oz or bigger an the printer might charge you more for all that black ink… Perhaps, that is why the public records cost so much.

    Also, shouldn’t contract with a public entity be a public record? I think all our contract are.
    http://cascadepolicy.org/govdocs/

  12. Anonymous 12/08/2012

    I’ll give you odds Randy takes Sharon with him, and she does the talking.

  13. Anonymous 12/09/2012

    Rudnick and Geller will go plead before the DA and the fire under both of their feet will intensify. Way to go UOmatters. This is the start of something dandy. And what in the hell is Gottfredson doing with this mess still in house. I would sweep the place clean. And to think that Gottfredson has not jumped right in with United Academics’ request to raise all faculty salaries by 3.5% immediately. Does he think Geller-Rudnick will pad his landing here?

    • Anonymous 12/09/2012

      More rope for Randy.

    • Anonymous 12/12/2012

      The union statement on the 3.5% raises contains your answer:

      “The Bargaining Team is concerned that the Administration did not accept our proposal. During the bargaining process, we will be introducing an integrated and robust set of salary proposals for all faculty at the University of Oregon. These include multi-year efforts to systematically correct the salary differential with our AAU comparators, correct inversion and compression, create transparent salary policies, and implement across the board raises that address the historical lack of raises for all faculty. We will also include a proposal to reward achievement through merit raises.”

      With so many proposals to be evaluated, why would the administration consider a raise without knowing the details of all of these other issues? As much as I’d like to, I can’t blame the administration on this one.

    • Anonymous 12/13/2012

      “integrated and robust set of salary proposals”

      I’m looking forward to hearing those. For one thing I don’t know how salary proposals would be “integrated” or “robust” so this will be a learning experience.

  14. Anonymous 12/12/2012

    Perlow is consulting with the DOJ about Randy Geller? Aren’t those the same people who did that hack job investigation of UO’s previous General Counsel?

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