Labor group Our Oregon and Oregon House Democrats have dragged state Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, to the woodshed for sending out unsolicited political emails.

“A lot of people feel like he’s invaded their inbox, and it’s very difficult to unsubscribe from his list,” Scott Moore, the spokesman for Our Oregon, told Salem’s Statesman-Journal.

Nobody wants a bunch of junk email, but we don’t believe this kerfuffle is as much about inboxes as it is about Richardson’s message. His most recent newsletter tries to sort myth from fact in the union dispute in Eagle Point and ultimately comes down against the teachers.

Richardson made public records requests from state agencies and gathered up email addresses. He compiled a list and has been using it to give oomph to his newsletters. For instance, he sent out 475,447 newsletters on Feb. 8. It was enough to crash the Legislature’s Web server.

OK, that crash shouldn’t happen. The problem has apparently been fixed. It hasn’t happened again.

Some people have also had trouble unsubscribing from his email list. Richardson says when he gets a complaint he works to get people off his list. That’s a reasonable approach.

The email that prompted the latest complaints was about the dispute between the school district in Eagle Point and the teachers unions. If you read the news stories, you can find out that teachers are on strike there and classes are canceled until Monday. The union doesn’t want the district to subcontract transportation jobs and does want more teacher preparation time. The district counters that giving in to the union demands would mean cuts to staff and school days.

What Richardson did is spell out the demands of the union and its previous contract, the district’s current offer and how the district has been spending down its reserves to keep operating. That’s more detail about what’s going on than what we found in any news article. The details certainly don’t flatter the teachers union.

If you are not on Richardson’s email list, you are missing out.