[Libs-Or] Response to Concerns from Commissioner Boice

[Traci Willey]

I received this response, which I found very interesting. -Traci


Dear Commissioner Boice,

I appreciate your effort to respond to the petition that I signed, however,
your response is lacking in several important particulars:

1. You did not reference the State law to which you refer, and speaking
from a position of some knowledge about the complexity of state law, I
cannot accept your statement at face value without the pertinent reference.

Given the status of the library as an independent (by governance)
institution even though it is financially dependent on the community, I am
not surprised that they would reference only links to “pro” articles and
letters to the editor in the paper. You effort to compel them to advocate
for their own elimination seems misguided, and contrary to the position of
the leadership of the library.

2. You inaccurately refer to the site as being "disrupted", by which I take
it to mean it was shutdown at your or the Commission's direct order, a
gross misrepresentation at best, and an abuse of authority at worst.

Directing the "disruption" of the library's website is *clearly* suppression
of information by the commissioners, and is an unflattering picture of the
means that the commission adopts to enforce its will (rather than that of
the people) upon a motivated and enthusiastic defense on literacy and free
access to information by the public. Any representation otherwise is
intentionally misleading and certainly not steps taken to create a free and
fair election by an informed electorate.

3. Kindly reserve your efforts to spin control without self-serving and
incompetent claims of "Please don’t make false accusations without
verifying the facts in the future."

A fourth note on standard business practice would be important to all
future communications with the public: kindly do not "cc" all petitioners
in a mass email in the future, which is surely a violation of the privacy
laws in your state - the laws in which you place great concern in
adjudicating all business before your commission. I suggest that future
responses place the addresses in the 'blind copy" field to avoid such a
problem.

Thank YOU,

John Paine
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/libs-or/attachments/20160930/920cb7c3/attachment.html>