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Members: Council broke law Gold Hill officials take their complaint to state panel By PETER WONG GOLD HILL -- Two dissenting members alleged Thursday that the City Council broke state law this week when it screened applicants for police chief in private without "regularized procedures." The members, Betsy Hettum and Donna Silva, filed the complaint with the Oregon Government Standards and Practices Commission. "Although some of these details do not directly come under your jurisdiction, they do relate to the fact that there are no regularized hiring policies for chief executive officers in the city of Gold Hill," they wrote in their letter. Their complaint was about a potential violation of Oregon's public meetings law when the council met Monday. The seven-member state ethics panel normally does not consider such violations, which are handled by the courts through lawsuits. Mayor Tim Roddam said the real goal of Hettum and Silva is to thwart the city's hiring of a police chief in favor of a contract with the Jackson County Sheriff's Department for law enforcement. "They will slap anything on us -- a lawsuit with spurious charges that we are violating Oregon law -- just to derail the process of hiring a chief of police," he said. "That is all there is to this." In public session Monday, the council voted down an ordinance that would have abolished a city police department. Hettum and Silva voted for abolition, but four other council members voted against it. In a closed session later, the council screened applicants for police chief. The position has been vacant since June 30, after then-Chief Dave Crawford, the city's only officer, was convicted of three misdemeanor charges. When the council briefly reconvened in public, Roddam said four applicants would be interviewed in a session tentatively set Oct. 12. Hettum and Silva argue in their complaint that the law bars the council from closing the meeting "unless the vacancy in that office has been advertised, regularized procedures for hiring have been adopted by the public body, and there has been an opportunity for public input into the employment of such an officer." Hettum said she and Silva first requested "regularized procedures" at a council meeting Sept. 17. They walked out then, leaving the council without enough members to conduct business. Roddam said Thursday that the council adopted a set of personnel policies and procedures in 1987. "We have adopted standards by which we will hire and maintain someone in city employment," he said. "If they are saying we have nothing official, that is untrue. I think we have complied with the law." Hettum said she and Silva took part in the closed session despite their protests about it because they were "unwilling to allow them to continue conducting city business out of our view." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA