Oregon’s open records law serves to ensure that members of the public, including the news media, can track what public officials are doing. That’s a fact that apparently escapes those at the Portland school district.

The district, faced with a recent request for records with which it disagrees, has decided instead to take the requesters to court. One is a reporter with the Portland Tribune; the other a parent in the district.

The reporter and the parent both seek a list of those in the district who are on paid administrative leave. The district rejected the request, arguing that disclosure of the records would be an invasion of employees’ privacy because some are on paid disciplinary leave.

From there the matter went to Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill. Oregon law gives local district attorneys the power to settle public records disputes short of going to court.

Underhill issued his decision Monday, siding with the newspaper and the parent seeking the records. Release of the records, he said, is not an undue invasion of privacy. That leaves the district the choice of making the records public or going to court in an attempt to quash the requests. It has chosen the latter.

Granted, the state’s largest school district has had its share of public information nightmares recently, from the discovery of lead in district drinking water and the attempt to obscure that fact, to the near-hiring of a new attorney for the district who had been convicted of violating Florida’s public records law while working in that state. But it apparently hasn’t learned anything from those problems.

Government openness, whether in Portland, Bend or Paisley, is required by Oregon law. There are exceptions, to be sure, but, as Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum notes in the introduction to her office’s manual on open records and meetings, state law establishes a general expectation of openness. All Oregonians, Portlanders and reporters, have a right to know how their tax dollars are being spent and how government agencies are exercising the powers granted them by law.