It's too bad, but the Oregon Supreme Court has decided not to get involved in the latest dispute over government records. This could open the way for the public to be shut out more often when people are looking for information the local or state governments have.

If you remember - and of course you do! - the case arose in Klamath Falls, where some residents complained to the school board about what they thought were irregularities. The school board hired a lawyer to look into this. The lawyer hired an accountant and another investigator. They reported to the lawyer, and in the fullness of time the lawyer reported to the board. The school board issued a public statement saying the investigation had uncovered no misdeeds but it was changing some policies. The board also refused to make public the lawyer's report.

A judge in Klamath Falls agreed with the school board that the lawyer's report was covered by the lawyer-client privilege of confidentiality, and the Court of Appeals agreed with the Klamath Falls judge. And now, the Supreme Court has said it won't take the case.

Fine, but the case still stinks. If a local government spends public money to find something out, especially if it concerns potential wrongdoing, you would think that it is in everybody's interest to make public whatever the investigation finds.

If it finds no wrongdoing, as the board in this case asserted, why hide the report? And if it did find problems, isn't that all the more reason to make them public?

People interested in public affairs and local government, and that includes the press, are worried that the Klamath Falls gambit might spread now that it has been blessed by the Oregon courts.

If you're a governmental body and want to avoid the embarrassment of having to disclose an unpleasant fact, all you have to do is hire a lawyer to look into it and then claim that the whole story is confidential.

We can hope that most local governments in the mid-valley are above such maneuvers. But who knows? Some days the temptation to go this route might be too strong.

I wrote about this a few months ago and wasn't all that worried about it, mostly because I figured that whatever the outcome of this court case, it didn't keep anybody else from looking into situations where official wrongdoing is suspected. The police might do so, for example, and their reports are confidential only while the investigation continues or the case is still in court.

Still, it would have been much to be preferred if our higher courts had knocked down this abuse of one of the exceptions in the public-records law.

The records law is based on the notion that to begin with, all records kept by government are public, with a few reasonable exceptions.

Over the years the exceptions have multiplied, but most routine records are still available to the public.

This Klamath case, though, seems to open a gaping hole in the law. If that's how it works out, Oregon citizens and voters will have to ask the Legislature to close it again.

Hering has been editor of the D-H since 1978.