One million dollars approved by the Oregon Legislature for horse racing improvements in Crook County has become the center of a government transparency dispute after county records revealed that three members of a Fair Board funding committee met privately while working through possible uses of the state money.
The dispute reaches beyond a single county fairground. Oregon lawmakers appropriated $5 million from the state General Fund in 2026 and divided the money equally among Crook, Harney, Josephine, Tillamook and Union counties. Each county was designated to receive $1 million for horse racing activities and infrastructure at county fairgrounds, placing five local governments under the same state funding requirements.
House Bill 5204 established the appropriation through the Oregon Department of Administrative Services. The Legislature directed that the money support horse racing events, including maintenance of racing tracks and construction or maintenance of infrastructure that enhances or protects the safety and well-being of racehorses.
The legislation did not leave the counties with unrestricted $1 million accounts. The Department of Administrative Services is directed to work with the Oregon Racing Commission on agreements governing the distributions, including requirements for counties to report how the money is spent. State officials are expected to provide the Legislature’s Emergency Board with information about the agreements, distributions and expenditures in December 2026.
Crook County’s share moved into a local planning process through the county Fair Board, where a three-member Funding Committee was established as officials began considering eligible projects and the boundaries of the state appropriation.
Fair Board members Casey Kaiser, Gail Merritt and Larry Blanton were identified in county records as members of that committee. The Fair Board publicly acknowledged committee activity at its April 20 meeting, where a Funding Info Committee Update appeared on the agenda. Committee-related business also appeared in subsequent Fair Board proceedings as county officials worked through how the legislative funding could be used.
Records later obtained concerning the committee’s work revealed another part of that process: committee members had met outside the Fair Board’s regular public meetings while discussing potential projects and permissible uses of the $1 million.
Those discussions reportedly included consideration of what could qualify for funding under the legislation. Representatives associated with the Crooked River Roundup also participated in some of the discussions, according to records and reporting surrounding the matter.
The existence of private meetings has placed the committee’s legal structure at the center of the dispute because Oregon’s Public Meetings Law does not apply solely to county commissions, city councils and other elected bodies. Boards, commissions and committees can also fall under its requirements when their membership, authority and governmental function meet the definitions established under state law.
A governing body covered by the law generally must conduct its deliberations in meetings open to the public, provide appropriate public notice and maintain a record of its proceedings. Determining whether those requirements applied to Crook County’s Funding Committee depends on the authority assigned to the committee and the governmental role it performed.
That question remains unresolved.
No court has established that Crook County illegally spent the $1 million, and the available information does not establish that any of the state appropriation was misappropriated. The current dispute instead concerns the process used while possible expenditures were being developed and whether the Funding Committee was legally required to conduct those discussions in publicly noticed meetings.
Crook County had confronted the legal boundaries surrounding Fair Board committees before the 2026 appropriation arrived.
Fair Board records from September 2024 document County Counsel Eric Blaine discussing circumstances in which a Fair Board subcommittee could become subject to Oregon’s Public Meetings Law. The legal discussion addressed the difference between a committee making recommendations to the full Fair Board and a committee providing information or recommendations to an individual official who independently possesses decision-making authority.
That earlier discussion now intersects directly with the structure of the 2026 Funding Committee. Establishing where the committee’s recommendations went, what authority its members exercised and whether it functioned as part of the Fair Board’s decision-making process will be central to determining whether Oregon’s open-meeting requirements applied to its gatherings.
The dispute has moved beyond county meeting records and into Crook County Circuit Court. Allegations involving the Funding Committee have been incorporated into litigation challenging alleged violations of Oregon’s Public Meetings Law. The litigation has not produced a final judicial finding that the county, Fair Board or individual committee members violated state law.
Oregon also has an administrative avenue for resolving public-meeting complaints. The Oregon Government Ethics Commission has jurisdiction over qualifying Public Meetings Law complaints under the state’s current enforcement system. The process generally begins with a written grievance submitted to the public body, followed by an opportunity for that body to respond before an eligible complaint proceeds to the commission.
While the Crook County dispute develops, four other Oregon counties are administering equal appropriations authorized by the same legislation.
Josephine County received its own $1 million allocation under House Bill 5204, giving Southern Oregon a direct connection to the statewide program. Josephine County’s money is governed by the same legislative purpose and state reporting structure, although the information surrounding Crook County does not establish that Josephine County used the same committee arrangement or encountered comparable public-meeting issues.
The five allocations provide a statewide measure of how one legislative appropriation is handled after leaving Salem. Crook, Harney, Josephine, Tillamook and Union counties received equal amounts from the same $5 million General Fund appropriation, but the decisions identifying projects and carrying those projects forward occur through local governments with their own boards, officials and administrative processes.
Crook County’s experience has placed those local procedures alongside the financial accounting required by the state. The eventual list of projects and expenditures will document where the county’s $1 million went. The separate legal dispute will address how government officials conducted the work that preceded those decisions.
By December, the Department of Administrative Services and Oregon Racing Commission are expected to provide the Legislature’s Emergency Board with information covering county agreements, distributions and expenditures involving all five recipients. That reporting will give lawmakers a broader accounting of how the $5 million moved from a statewide appropriation into county fairground and horse racing projects.
For Crook County, the state accounting will arrive while the circumstances surrounding its Funding Committee remain under legal examination. What began as one of five equal appropriations for Oregon horse racing has produced a separate public-record question over how government business was conducted while officials decided what could be done with $1 million belonging to the public.