Ballot Measure Preparation and Political Advocacy Restrictions

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By Armand Resto-Spotts

ORS 260.432 provides that public employees may not use their work time, public resources, or public supplies to support or oppose measures, candidates, political committees, or petitions (i.e., “political advocacy”).  Let’s go over the specifics of these restrictions, and to whom and when they apply.

When does ORS 260.432 apply?

With respect to a ballot measure, ORS 260.432’s restrictions apply as soon as the measure is referred to the ballot by the governing body (i.e., City Council approves resolution to refer ballot measure), through 8:00 p.m. on the date of the election on which the measure is being voted on.  A county, city or district measure is certified to the ballot when the elections official files the referral with the county election office, not when the resolution is adopted.

Who must comply with ORS 260.432?

ORS 260.432’s limitations apply to all non-elected public employees. Public employees may not engage in political activity, as defined in ORS 260.432, during working hours or while acting in their official capacity.

“Working hours” or “official capacity” is defined depending on the type of employee. For hourly employees, work time includes any time they are on the job during working hours, which may include any time they are compensated for (e.g., overtime, travel, conferences).

Volunteers, other than members of appointed boards or commissions, who receive no compensation are not considered public employees and therefore are not subject to the provisions of ORS 260.432(2).

Salaried employees should consider themselves acting in “official capacity” at all times of day and location, unless otherwise reasonably understood (e.g., weekend, vacation) within their job description and the intended audience. For example, during public appearances, the salaried employee should announce to an audience that they are appearing in their capacity as a citizen, and not representing the City, prior to advocating for the ballot measure. We recommend keeping a log of on- and off-duty time, along with any time you are engaging in political advocacy off-duty, for reference and record purposes.

The Secretary of State’s Manual (Restriction on Political Advocacy by Public Employees) considers some activities always undertaken in official capacity regardless of time or location:

  • Drafting material for, or approving material, to be posted on an official website;
  • Drafting or distributing an official publication from the public agency; and
  • Appearing at an event as a representative of a public agency.

ORS 260.432 also applies to appointed board or commission members when they are acting in their official capacity – that is, at a meeting of the respective board or commission, working on a duty assigned by the board or commission, or appearing at an event in an official capacity. While appointed board or commission members may use their titles to engage in political advocacy (e.g., supporting a measure), they cannot do so while working hours or acting in their official capacity.

In contrast, elected officials are not subject to ORS 260.432, and may engage in political activity during work time. The city or district may publish an elected official’s quote, opinion piece, or speech advocating a political position in the city or district’s newsletter or other publication that is produced or distributed by public employees, so long as public employees do not alter or edit the content in any substantive way.

Examples of Prohibited and Allowed Activity

For some examples, public employees, during work hours or in their official capacity, should not:

  • Prepare or distribute materials, including emails, presentations, or website information that promotes or opposes the ballot measure. This includes materials like a speech, press release, constituent mail advocating a vote, candidate filing forms, voters’ pamphlet filing forms, and contribution and expenditure transactions online.

Note, however, that if these activities are part of the employee’s job, public employees may process and distribute mail addressed to specific employees that contains political advocacy.

  • Post material to official government social media account(s) supporting or opposing the ballot measure.
  • Give a speech or presentation promoting or opposing the measure.
  • Send or forward emails with political advocacy.

In contrast, public employees during work hours may:

  • Perform administrative functions and tasks as part of their regular job duties, including drafting ballot titles and explanatory statement(s).
  • Answer questions from the public and express statements of fact regarding the ballot measure, which include statements that concern the employee’s understanding of the impacts of passage or defeat of the measure. The information presented must be impartial and balanced. This includes posts to social media, which must be fair and impartial, and comments received must be treated equally.
  • Express personal political views, provided that a reasonable person would not believe that the public employee’s opinion represents that of the City.

For example, City Manager presents to staff about the ballot measure and verbalizes: “I hope we all agree that it is important that this measure passes.” This would be potentially violative of ORS 260.432.  However, if a City employee speaks to a co-worker about the ballot measure and expresses their personal opinion on the measure, this is not a violation of ORS 260.432, because the co-worker could not infer that the employee’s view represents that of the City.

  • Attend meetings at which political issues are discussed, so long as the public employee does not engage in prohibited political advocacy.
  • Display or post campaign materials, campaign buttons or signs in employee’s work spaces, as long as the employee otherwise complies with City policies, the materials were not created during work hours, and no public resources were used to create the materials. Importantly, the materials, buttons, or signs may not indicate that the City or its employees are taking an official position on the ballot measure.
  • During personal time, which may include lunch hour, breaks, authorized leave, or days off, public employees may engage in political advocacy. This is strictly voluntary, and no public time or resources may be used.
  • While personal opinions may be expressed in the above scenarios, they should be identified as such (i.e., in my personal opinion …”.

Looking Forward

As you look forward into next year, be wary of the following deadlines:

  • February 27, 2026 – By this date, your board or council must adopt the resolution calling for the election, attaching the ballot title text and explanatory statement text as exhibits, and submit SEL 805 to the respective county.
  • March 19, 2026 – By this date, you must file the SEL Notice of Election form (Form SEL 801, 802, or 803, as appropriate) with the county. The explanatory statement gets attached to the appropriate Notice of Election form when filed with the county.

If you have any questions about restrictions on political advocacy, do not hesitate to contact our office.

Contracting Tips and Traps – Fall 2025

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By Carrie Connelly

At the beginning of 2025, I provided some public contracting guidance to take into account as budgets were being developed and your building seasons planned.  The following public contracting tips can help as you spend those budgeted funds on those planned projects and purchases.

  1. I want to touch on the growing buzz around alternative contracting methods (i.e. Design/Build and Construction Manager General Contractor (CMGC)) to help you determine whether one is truly best for your entity. These methods are complicated, not readily available, and require sophisticated team members who are prepared to work together from project design through its completion. If your governing body does decide to use an alternative contracting method, make the most of that approach.  Don’t undermine intended benefits by prohibiting team members from talking to each other.  Such communications may seem to cost you more upfront, but they serve the valuable purpose of ensuring that completed designs can be constructed within your limited budget.  If early work and conversations are not desired, a standard design/bid/build approach will best serve your interests.
  1. Always include the desired contract with all written solicitations. Lengthy (thus costly) contract negotiations can be significantly reduced, or eliminated altogether, if your required contract is issued with your Invitation to Bid or Request for Proposals. Specify that submittal of a bid or proposal indicates agreement with the attached contract terms. Doing so requires bidders and proposers to request contract changes within submitted bids or proposals.  Failure to do so waives an awardee’s opportunity to negotiate upon award.
  1. Once you’ve perfected your procurement, chosen the desired contractor, and executed a comprehensive contract – be sure to follow those contract terms. You might have evidence that a project was poorly completed, a purchase is flawed, or that a contractor failed to properly request multiple change orders.  However, if you failed to follow the contract’s payment or claim procedures, you may be precluded from enforcing those terms.
  1. Before issuing any goods or service procurement, check the Oregon Forward (formerly QRF) website: https://www.oregon.gov/das/opm/pages/oregonforward.aspx.

Contracting with a qualified rehabilitation provider is legally required, if available. (ORS 279.850.)

If an agency is listed that provides the goods or services needed, your entity must contact that company to determine whether it has the capacity to provide the required services.  If so, you are required to contract with that agency instead of issuing any solicitation.  It is possible that listed companies are too busy or no longer provide the desired services.  But if a listed agency is available, negotiations are strictly limited to services.  Prices are set by DAS, so even if not competitive, price is non-negotiable.

One benefit of pursuing an Oregon Forward contract is that this type of service contract is exempt from ORS 297B solicitation requirements.  ORS 279A.020(4). The contract, however, must still include all required ORS 279B public contracting terms.

  1. In other contracting news, for the second legislative session in a row, we have determined that no updated public contracting rules are required for 2026! If your entity has adopted its own public contracting rules, as always, LGLG attorneys and staff remain ready and available to assist with any procurement and contracting questions you may have.

If your entity has chosen to adopt its own public contracting rules, be sure to follow them.  Make sure that they, not the AG’s Model Rules (OAR’s), are referenced in your procurement and contracting documents.

Union Bargaining Preparation for 2026

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By Diana Moffat

What???? Our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) doesn’t even expire until June 30, 2026!

Trust me. I hear you. But labor negotiations, just like so many other things, continue to evolve. One of those evolutions has been the preparation, and associated time, needed by the employer prior to that first negotiation session with the Union.

And then, once you actually meet with the Union to begin bargaining, the Collective Bargaining process can, unfortunately, take many, many months to complete. At best, you are looking at two to five months of getting things settled. At worst, much longer! There is a distinct advantage to completing the process, if at all possible, prior to the expiration of the current CBA.

It is not too late to take advantage of the following tips:

Early preparation:

  • Have your management team, your supervisors and your labor lawyer review the CBA for needed changes such as adjustments to language for ambiguity, past grievances, updates to the law, etc.
  • If possible, begin a compensation overview. That might be as simple as assessing if you have some indicators that you are behind the “market” or engaging someone to do a full compensation review, in consultation with your labor lawyer.
  • Try to encourage the Union to come to the table early – perhaps November, December, or at the latest early January. It helps to get those dates on the calendar early before folks start leaving for holiday time off.

  Advantages to early resolution:

  • If you can resolve your negotiations prior to expiration, you are not faced with any type of retroactive pay issues. This can go a long way with employee morale for both your regular employees and those employees who process payroll.
  • Unless you have fully employer-funded insurance premiums, once the CBA expires you could be faced with the danger-zone of figuring out what your “status quo” obligations are toward the funding of the employee’s portion of health care coverage.
  • You can use “early resolution” to your advantage in getting a settlement.
  • If faced with a situation of non-settlement, you can get to mediation and/or arbitration/impasse shortly after expiration. By July and August, the waiting time increases for mediation scheduling. There are only three mediators for the entire State of Oregon.

 Timelines:

  • Does your CBA require notice to “open” bargaining? If so, you and/or the Union need to meet that deadline with a notice of the desire to bargain for a successor CBA.
  • The required 150-day bargaining period, under the Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act (PECBA), does not even begin until the initial proposals have been exchanged. Because of that, early scheduling can be a real advantage.
  • Development of your proposals should begin early on. Precise contract language is of utmost importance. The development of your proposals should be done in a very thought-out fashion, with input from supervisors to Council/Board members. This process takes time.

Developing your plan:

  • Now is the time to review your contract to identify what is working and what needs to be changed. Are there any needed legal updates? Has your labor counsel reviewed your CBA for ambiguous language? Are there any MOUs that need to be incorporated into the main CBA?
  • Now is the time to decide if you want to do a comparable analysis, in conformity with the PECBA, to assess your financial place within the market.
  • Now is the time to look at your budget projections for your limitations or wiggle room.
  • Now is the time to decide who will be your representative at the bargaining table and who will be on your bargaining team.
  • Do your City Council, County Commissioners, or Executive Board need to be advised on the process, the rules and laws that regulate Public employee collective bargaining? Now is the time to schedule that training.

Current “Hot” issues to consider:

  • There have been changes to Paid Leave Oregon (PLO) and OFLA regarding the definition of immediate family members, as well as two new Oregon ERB cases regarding public employer selection of coverage for PLO. It is important for you to understand what you do and do not need to bargain with the Union.
  • For your strike-prohibited groups, don’t overlook the need to update your grievance procedure language in accordance with HB 2930.
  • Have you reviewed your CPI index language? Many public sector employers have ambiguous CPI index language. Bargaining is the ideal time to clarify the index with specificity.

So, when you find yourself planning for the approach of winter, let that remind you to begin preparing for your upcoming bargaining. Preparation comes before success, even in the dictionary!

The Budget Process in Four Simple Steps

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by Mark Wolf

It is hard to believe that it is already the beginning of February and budget season is upon us! For many of you, you are already off and running. This article explains the budget process in four simple steps. It also serves as a reminder that ORS 192.670 requires governing bodies (to the extent reasonably possible) to make public meetings accessible by telephone, video, or other electronic means and to allow written testimony by email or other electronic means.

Budget Process in Four Simple Steps

If you have not already done so, the first step in the budget process is to appoint a budget officer. Typically, the budget officer is the chief executive officer (i.e., the fire chief or the city administrator), but your finance officer or even your attorney may function as the budget officer.

Step two is to review the composition of your Budget Committee. Your Budget Committee consists of the members of your governing body and an equal number of appointed electors. The appointed members of the Budget Committee may not be officers, agents, volunteers, or employees of your entity. If for some reason you cannot find enough electors for the Budget Committee, you may still move forward with the budget process. Just make sure that your minutes reflect the efforts you made to recruit citizen members.

Your third step is to make a copy of your proposed budget available for public review immediately after the budget officer releases it to the Budget Committee. Your budget officer must publish notice of the Budget Committee meeting, as well as a notice of the budget hearing held by your governing body.

Both the notice of your first Budget Committee meeting and the notice of your budget hearing can be published in one of four ways. The most common method of publication is to publish the notice in a newspaper of general circulation, at least 5 and not more than 30 days prior to the budget meeting or hearing. If you choose to publish in the paper, the notice of the Budget Committee meeting must be published twice. Notice of the budget hearing only needs to be published once. If your entity is located within Washington County, you must also send budget information to the County.

The notice of your budget hearing must include a summary of the budget approved by the Budget Committee. The Oregon Department of Revenue provides forms you can use to develop and publish your budget. You can find these forms by clicking on the following link and scrolling down to “Local budget”:

http://www.oregon.gov/DOR/forms/Pages/default.aspx.

The fourth step is to adopt the budget. Remember, your governing body has the ability to make changes to the Budget Committee’s recommended budget. New information introduced at the budget hearing should be carefully considered by the governing body prior to budget adoption. If a proposed change to the budget includes an increase in taxes, or more than a 10% increase in a fund, additional notice is required. Changes to the budget after adoption also generally require action by the governing body and sometimes require additional publications and public hearings. For this reason, all available information should be collected and considered during the budget process.

Your budget must be adopted on or before June 30.

Two Final Thoughts

First, it is very important that the Budget Committee approve any proposed taxes as part of its approval of the budget. If a tax election is scheduled for March or May (especially May), the Budget Committee should include the revenue from any anticipated additional tax authority in its approved budget. Act like the proposed tax election will pass and budget for it. If it fails, the governing body may reduce the budget. But if a Budget Committee fails to plan on the tax passing, you can run into timing issues as the governing body must publish a revised budget summary and hold a second hearing on the budget, which might prevent the tax from being certified prior to June 30.

Second, when thinking about your budget, consider which projects and purchases are planned for this upcoming year. Not only will this process assist you in projecting your entity’s expenditures and revenues, this level of planning will also allow you to provide the required notice to the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). State law requires that at least 30 days prior to budget adoption, your entity must submit to BOLI a “WH-118 form,” listing each public improvement your entity plans to fund in the upcoming budget period. For example, if you are planning to budget and use public funds to build a new fire station in the next year, you must file a form WH-118 with BOLI at least 30 days before your budget is adopted. Form WH-118 is available on BOLI’s website at:

http://www.oregon.gov/boli/WHD/PWR/docs/wh118.pdf.

As always, if you encounter any legal issues during your budget adoption cycle (or if you learn of information or receive additional revenue requiring a change in your adopted budget) please contact your legal counsel as early as possible. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is much more cost effective and efficient to consult with your legal counsel before a problem develops.