Rob Davis
The Oregonian
Oregon lawmakers withdrew a bill on Friday that would allow railroads to keep plans for oil train disasters a secret.
A year after a train derailed, caught fire and spilled oil into the Columbia River in Mosier, lawmakers were poised to approve a measure that would require railroads to draft worst-case scenario plans. But the bill also would prevent public scrutiny by exempting the plans from Oregon public records law and legal subpoenas.
Back to the drawing board
By a 31-26 vote, the House of Representatives agreed to send the bill back to the Legislature’s ways and means committee for more work.
The last-minute maneuvering on the House floor featured lawmakers on both sides of the issue criticizing The Oregonian/OregonLive for reporting on the effort to conceal the plans. A story about the legislation appeared on the newspaper’s front page Friday.
Rep. Barbara Smith Warner, a Portland Democrat who sponsored the bill, described the secrecy provisions during a speech on the House floor as “errant language” and said she “understood incorrectly” what they would do.
Lawmakers had been warned by the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association and Friends of the Columbia Gorge about the exemptions’ effects. The trial lawyers group said the secrecy would prevent victims of an oil train accident from determining whether a railroad acted negligently.
Smith Warner, who’s raised $2,500 from railroads since 2014, said the intention was not to hide the plans but to comply with federal law.
Railroads have consistently tried to keep information about oil trains secret. They have argued that federal law prohibits disclosing where the easily identifiable, mile-long trains move, saying that sharing the information endangers national security. The federal Department of Transportation and the Oregon Department of Justice have rejected that argument.
Smith Warner said her bill would harmonize Oregon’s planning requirements with Washington and California. But in those states, railroads’ spill plans are public records.
Washington law
In 2015, Washington adopted a far more transparent law. It was championed by Republican Sen. Doug Ericksen, a Trump political appointee backed by the oil and railroad industries. The only details kept secret in Washington’s spill plans are personal cell phone numbers.
“This has been a complicated path, a long negotiation and despite that there are times when the need for good policy overrides the need for consensus,” Smith Warner said. “This is one of those times.”
Rep. Mark Johnson, R-Hood River, opposed tabling the bill, saying that if the secrecy provisions were removed “it has a very uncertain pathway through the legislature.”
Johnson called The Oregonian’s story “a bad piece of journalism that had very few sources in there that represent mainstream thought.”
The story quoted Union Pacific railroad, an environmental activist and a Washington oil spill regulator.
Rep. John Huffman, R-The Dalles, also was disappointed to see the bill pulled back from the House floor after long negotiations. He said the bill was “written this way so it won’t be litigated ad nauseum.”
Unhappy lawmaker
After the vote, a clearly angry Smith Warner telephoned a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive. She briefly described the House floor action, urged a closer look at the campaign donations Johnson had received from railroad companies ($10,800 since 2010), then abruptly hung up.
