Articles Posted in State Government & Legal Resources

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This donation is no small contribution to our superseded ORS scanning project and I would be woefully remiss if I didn’t publicly thank the Oregon Supreme Court Justices for donating (lending!) to us their set of the superseded Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS).
We will take good care of it and see that it is returned, with a full set of digitized statutes.  (We also plan to create microfilm sets for archival purposes.)
Heretofore, we had been able to locate only 3 complete sets of these superseded statutes (a summary of the Long Road to Superseded ORS Digitization story is available at the project’s blog post), none of which was accessible except in Salem and Portland and none could be take off-site. (Incomplete sets exist in many libraries and on microfilm.)
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While at the Oregon Library Association conference in Salem yesterday, I attended a session on government transparency in Oregon. This included a presentation about the Oregon Attorney General’s Government Transparency Initiative, courtesy of the Department of Justice’s new Government Transparency Counsel, Michael Kron, and Communications and Policy Director, Tony Green. In particular they spoke about the current proposed public records legislative amendments in Senate Bill 41, which among other things significantly reduces the number of exemptions allowing records to be kept secret, creates clear public records request deadlines, and lowers or eliminates request fees. For more background, check out the 2010 Government Transparency Report and other resources found on the Government Transparency Initiative site.

Other interesting state government public data websites were presented at this session by Sean McSpaden, Deputy State CIO. His department, the Oregon Department of Administrative Services, was directed by a 2009 Oregon legislative measure to create an Oregon Transparency Website. From the site’s FAQ:

“The Oregon Transparency Web site contains information about each state agency, including but not limited to:

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“The Oregon Supreme Court has initiated webcasting of oral arguments conducted before the court in the Supreme Court Courtroom….
Chief Justice Paul J. Demuniz issued Chief Justice Order 11-008 on April 4, 2011.  The Order authorizes webcasting of oral arguments and sets out procedures applicable to those cases that will be webcast.”  [Link to OJD announcement.]
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This is the time of year when we start getting questions from people wanting the 2010 and 2011 Oregon Revised Statutes.
I’ve blogged about this before so just substitute the years 2010 (or 11) for 2009 (or 10) …. You can also read this post:  Where is the 2009 ORS? Hold Your Oregon Horses ….
Of course we still don’t know if there will be even-year ORS compilations or if the Legislature will still publish the odd-year ones with an even-year session law compilation.  We’ll wait to hear from Legislative Counsel on that decision.  They are the ones who do the almost thankless job of codifying the Oregon Laws.  (But we thank them!)
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If you need to know the legislative history of a Oregon statute, please remember:

1) Prior to 1995, Legislative Minutes and Exhibits were microfilmed. The microfilm isn’t complete, and won’t include many other documents that are required when you need to compile a thorough legislative history, but it is still a very useful research resource.

2) From 1995 – 2007: Legislative tracings and minutes are on the Oregon State Archives website. Legislative bills, session law, and some calendars are on the Legislature’s website.
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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (Wikipedia entry) changed the lives of working people, at least in this country, and at least for a while. (Further tragedies needed to occur for other workplace safety improvements to be made.)

1) Cornell Remembrance of the Factory Fire

2) The Shirtwaist Factory Fire Trial

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I recently had a question about restraining orders, which sent me looking up information about Oregon’s Family Abuse and Prevention Act, known as FAPA. In the process, I realized that our blog’s link to the useful “Revised FAPA Benchguide 2006” had moved far, far away – well, just to the Oregon Judicial Department’s FAPA forms website. Once there, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the link to the .pdf.

The State of Oregon FAPA forms on that same page may also be of interest, although it is important to first see if you local circuit court has FAPA forms specific to your county. If they do exist, they are usually found in the Family Law section of the website. For instance, the Washington County Circuit Court’s restraining order forms can be found here.

Other important and related resources concerning restraining orders, abuse prevention, and domestic violence include:

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Gustbuster_Top

The Washington County (Oregon) Law Library is scanning the 1953-1987 Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS).

These particular volumes are also known as the “Gutbusters,” because the pages are filed in 7-10” gut-busting (to lift) loose-leaf binders.

Read the project description and view a sample 1955 Chapter:

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