QuickTake:

The Eugene Police Department wanted to charge $360 to advocates seeking public records of a cold case file from the 1980s involving a missing Eugene woman. After they sued over the charges, a Lane County judge ordered the city to provide the records for free. The city now may have to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees. 

The Eugene Police Department lost a public records lawsuit after it tried to charge advocates $360 for records related to an unsolved decades-old case involving a missing Eugene woman. 

Now, the department could be on the hook for thousands of dollars in legal fees.

A Lane County Circuit Court ruling in April handed a victory to Elizabeth and Aaron Becker after they took the Eugene Police Department to court. The judge ordered the department to grant a full fee waiver and provide records free of charge to the Beckers, who work with the Oregon nonprofit A Voice for the Silenced to raise awareness about missing women cases and domestic violence issues.  

They sought records for the case of Kathleen Susan Meyers, a 27-year-old Eugene woman who went missing June 1, 1986. The case is in a federal database of missing people,with few details other than that she was last seen in her residence.

The ruling came after the Beckers, a married couple, and their Eugene attorney, David Bahr, spent months trying to get the police department to grant a fee waiver that took into account the Beckers’ advocacy work on the issue of missing women and their nonprofit’s mission. 

Oregon law allows public agencies to charge reasonable fees for access to public records. But it also allows people requesting access to ask for a fee waiver in cases they believe serve the public interest.

“My takeaway from this case is that the decision underscored that the public should have access to its own records that are being held essentially in trust by these public bodies,” Bahr said in an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield.

A spokesperson for the Eugene Police Department declined to comment on the lawsuit and ruling.

The Beckers’ lawsuit says the goal of their nonprofit, A Voice for the Silenced, is to address the “longstanding epidemic of missing persons in our society, with a focus on females missing under suspicious circumstances and municipal law enforcement’s response to these cases over time.”

The case filings include records that show that for months, Bahr repeatedly tried, through phone calls and correspondence, to negotiate with public records staffers before his clients went to court. The police department received the records request in July 2023 — and the lawsuit was filed in March 2024.

The city had wanted to charge $360, which comes after a 25% discount of $120 on a $480 bill. That price was for an estimated 10 hours of work to search and review records.

Lane County Circuit Court Judge Michelle Bassi found the city police department failed to meet the burden necessary to justify its rejection of a fee waiver.

“Therefore, defendant is directed to waive the fees for making public records available in response to plaintiffs’ public record request,” the judgment said.

The ruling met the plaintiffs’ goal: to get the public records with a fee waiver. Bahr said the city has provided the records to his clients. 

Before the ruling, the city had declined to move forward with processing the records request without payment. The ruling, while favoring the Beckers’ request for a waiver, did not find that the city’s proposed fee was excessive or that the city illegally withheld public records.

Next steps

The city’s reluctance to grant a fee waiver could cost it more than $360. 

The judge will also decide how much the city will need to pay the plaintiffs to cover their attorney’s fees. 

Bahr’s statement to the court shows the accumulated fees in the case are $89,311, a figure that takes into account work that started in 2023 when he first started approaching the city for a fee waiver. 

A judge hasn’t yet approved a figure. 

Meanwhile, the city has filed notice with the court it plans to appeal the ruling that found it failed to justify its rejection of a fee waiver. It’s unclear how the appeal will change the outcome, as the plaintiffs now have the records.

The appeal also will not negate the attorney fees it will need to pay to cover the Beckers’ legal costs.

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.