Gov. Kate Brown’s administration briefs lawmakers daily on Oregon’s coronavirus response. The public isn’t invited.

Gov. Kate Brown's administration holds daily private calls with state lawmakers to update them on Oregon's coronavirus response. In this file photo, Brown held a press conference publicly laying out her COVID-19 containment strategy and plans for reopening. Beth Nakamura/Staff

Oregon lawmakers plan to press leaders of the state’s Employment Department in a special hearing Saturday on how they will solve huge backlogs of unemployment claims that have frustrated thousands of laid-off workers. They’ll give the public full access to the same information via a live stream.

But that hasn’t been the case for many of lawmakers’ recent meetings with Employment Department officials – or for their many private briefings from the governor’s office, top health officials and other key officials in Gov. Kate Brown’s administration since mid-March.

Amid the pandemic and the ensuing cratering of the Oregon economy, her administration has held daily teleconference meetings to brief all 90 lawmakers on the latest coronavirus news — and allow question-and-answer sessions with top executive branch officials.

On May 8, for example, an assistant director at the employment department, David Gerstenfeld, joined the governor’s daily teleconference to update lawmakers on the agency’s handling of unemployment claims. A legislative staffer’s notes on the meeting, obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive, suggested it unfolded similarly to a routine public committee hearing.

Gerstenfeld delivered a brief update, telling lawmakers that a new claims processing center in Wilsonville would soon open, that more people facing furloughs were beginning to file for the state’s Work Share program and that constituents filing for unemployment under a federal expansion should be assured their claims were received — even though the state’s system did not acknowledge them.

Then, as in a public committee meeting, it was time for questions. Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, said she heard from out-of-work constituents who went five or six weeks without contact from the state. According to notes on the meeting, Johnson described these people as “desperate” and “panic stricken” and asked Gerstenfeld how the agency was dealing with the languishing claims. He explained Oregon has “a very old system” that “cannot handle” some of the necessary updates.

Lawmakers have heard on a weekly basis from the Department of Human Services director, Fariborz Pakseresht, who oversees nursing home regulators, welfare and food stamp programs, and child welfare. The day after The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that the state ordered a Southeast Portland long-term care center with at least 29 deaths to close, Pakseresht described to lawmakers how residents were relocated and staff would be laid off. According to a newsletter from Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, Pakseresht informed lawmakers that two Salem area long-term care facilities had become, in Dembrow’s words, “real problems:” 26 total positive cases of COVID-19 and three deaths at Salem Transitional Care, 25 cases and one death at Prestige Senior Living.

On May 13, Pakseresht used some of his teleconference with lawmakers to explain how a 17% budget cut — the amount Brown asked agencies to generate cuts lists for as a planning exercise — would impact the human services department. Given the potential for such an across-the-board cut, Pakseresht said hiring was on hold, including in the child welfare program where the well-documented worker shortage puts children in danger and fuels employee burnout.

Public meetings laws in Oregon generally require a public body such as the Legislature to give the public advance notice of any meeting where a quorum will be gathered to conduct public business, including getting input from staffers on topics which it may later deliberate to take action on.

But officials in the governor’s office and the Legislature’s top lawyer argue that requirement hasn’t been triggered by any of the more than 50 daily briefings held for all 90 members of the House and Senate so far. Lawmakers on the calls, even as they ask questions, are merely getting information about decisions of the governor and executive agencies, not preparing to make those decisions themselves, they say.

Yet the agency directors taking part in the calls all have budgets overseen by the Legislature, which holds the state purse strings and is expected to meet in a special session sometime in the near future to rework state spending in response to the pandemic.

And state officials are keenly aware that journalists and the public are hungrier to learn what their government is and is not doing in the era of coronavirus than in normal times. Briefings held by Brown, by top Oregon Health Authority officials and by Multnomah County elected and public health leaders, for example, are live streamed by thousands of ordinary Oregonians and covered extensively by news outlets.

Although the governor has said she plans to eventually call lawmakers into a special session to address coronavirus impacts, the state’s good financial situation going into the crisis means she has needed little additional spending authority in the short term. Brown’s communications director, Thomas Wheatley, said Thursday the governor is continuing to discuss a potential special session with legislative leaders but it is not imminent.

Some of the lawmakers who’ve taken part in the governor’s daily teleconference calls are members of the Legislative Emergency Board, which has met twice since the virus struck Oregon to make coronavirus-related budget tweaks.

Through a spokesperson, the governor said the purpose of the calls is to update lawmakers on her administration’s response to COVID-19 and answer any questions they have. “They are much like other briefings and meetings typically held in the Capitol between our office and legislators under normal circumstances, which are separate from the press briefings we hold and other public meetings,” deputy communications director Charles Boyle wrote in an email Friday. “We do not track attendance for these briefings, but generally several dozen legislators and staff participate, typically a mix from all four caucuses,” meaning both Democrats and Republicans from the House and from the Senate take part.

Brown’s staff would not answer questions about why the meetings must be closed to the public and how long the administration plans to continue the practice.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom held daily briefings each weekday from early March through mid-May to give reporters and the public coronavirus-related updates. The Los Angeles Times called his unscripted noon sessions, streamed live on TV and social media, a pandemic staple.

The Oregonian/OregonLive asked the governor’s staff on May 5 to allow a reporter listen in to the calls she organizes for lawmakers. Boyle declined, writing in an email that “as informational briefings with legislators that are not deliberative in nature, these meetings are not subject to open meetings requirements. This is in line with other briefings and meetings held in the Capitol between our office and legislators under normal circumstances.”

In a May 12 email to The Oregonian/OregonLive, the Legislature’s top lawyer, Dexter Johnson, concurred. “I have not attended these meetings but have been told that no deliberations towards a legislative decision are occurring during the course of these daily conference calls,” Johnson wrote.

Johnson said the calls were requested by the governor “to aid the governor in making decisions the governor must make,” as well as to inform lawmakers about what the executive branch is doing. “There is no legislative decision that is being discussed at these conference calls, but rather decisions the governor has made or is contemplating.”

Senate Majority Leader Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, said he has joined some calls and had his legislative staff monitor others.

“It’s an opportunity for (the Oregon Health Authority) primarily but also some (other) agency folks to be able to give timely updates of things that are happening” so that lawmakers can answer constituents’ questions, Wagner said, “I’ve never felt that there was something that had to do with legislative deliberation. And frankly, I appreciate the fact it’s Democrats and Republicans across the state coming together.”

House Republican Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, said the governor’s staff has used the typically hourlong daily calls to share information, rather than to shape a legislative response to coronavirus. Drazan said the meetings — although initially helpful as an opportunity to get “the most robust access to information” — might no longer be necessary, if Brown ends her emergency declaration-based pandemic response and enlists lawmakers in a collaborative approach.

“I was always surprised that those calls were viewed as sort of high-level briefings, when people were concerned about what was going to happen next,” Drazan said. “There was sort of this tight-fisted approach to information sharing when I don’t know why that was necessary.”

-- Hillary Borrud: hborrud@oregonian.com; @hborrud

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