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Public Meetings Law Training Submission


Training Approval Process

If a governing body has total expenditures of $1 million or more in a fiscal year, each governing body member is required to take a training on Oregon's Public Meetings Law at least once during each term of their office. To fulfill the requirement, the training must be provided or approved by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission (ORS 192.700).


Process Timeline

OGEC will review training materials provided in the order they are received. Staff will provide confirmation that they have received the materials and give a timeline of when you can expect to receive your assessment. Please allow at least 30 days for your training to be reviewed.


  1. Training Approval Request Form (found at bottom of page)
  2. Training Content (one or more of the following):
    • PDF copy of the training slide deck with speaker notes
    • SCORM file
    • Video recording that includes any audio and visuals used
  3. PDF of any handouts or resources provided as part of the training
Please submit all required training materials in the request form at the bottom of this page. If including a SCORM file or more than 8 files, email those to training@ogec.oregon.gov.

​OGEC will be reviewing the training content for accuracy. Our review is to ensure that the training includes all substantive requirements and best practices of Public Meetings Law (ORS 192.610 - 192.705 and OAR Chapter 199 Division 40-50). For the training content review, OGEC has created an assessment form that identifies each required content area.

The trainings will be assessed on the following criteria:

  1. Does the training cover the required provisions and content of the statutes and administrative rules?
  2. Does the training present the information correctly?
  3. Does the training provide references to the statutes and administrative rules in either the slides, trainer's narrative, handouts, or other written materials?
  4. Does the training provide an overview of the definitions?
  5. Does the training answer the question: What bodies are governing bodies?
  6. Does the training answer the question: What is a meeting?
  7. Does the training answer the questions: Who does the Public Meetings Law apply to? Who is responsible for ensuring Public Meetings Law is followed?
  8. Does the training answer the question: What are the Public Meetings Law requirements (notice, accessibility, location, recordings, etc.)?
  9. Does the training answer the question: What are the requirements for executive sessions?
  10. Does the training cover executive session provisions identified in the assessment form?
    • While trainings are not required to cover every executive session provision, there are some specific topics that are applicable to the majority of governing bodies and therefore must be addressed during the training. These topics are identified in the assessment form.
    • If the training includes any of the provisions in ORS 192.660(2) that have mandatory prerequisites, the training content must also explain these prerequisites.

​Each training will be reviewed using OGEC's assessment form. The training content will be assessed using the following criteria:

  1. Has Required Information: This training content meets the requirements. No changes are necessary.
  2. Requires Revision: This training content has information that needs to be changed in some way. We have provided notes on what needs to be changed. The revised content will need to be re-submitted.
  3. Missing Information: This training content is missing information that is required. We have provided notes on what is missing. The revised content will need to be re-submitted.

Training Approval

Final training approval will come from OGEC's Executive Director. Organizations will receive a signed letter stating the date of the training approval. The approval letter will be available in OGEC's online public records. A list of current approved trainings will be on OGEC's website.

For a list of approved trainings and instructions on how to navigate OGEC's public record search, visit our Approved Public Meetings Law Trainings page.


Approved Public Meetings Law Trainings


Frequency of Approval Process

OGEC's approval of an organization's training will expire one year from the date of approval or sooner if any substantive changes have been made to the statutes or rules or if the training content is changed. Organizations will need to resubmit or submit new training for approval annually (OAR 199-050-0085).



Training Approval Request Form

The training approval request form has required questions about your training content and requires you to email your training documentation before submission. Please make sure you have all training documents ready when beginning your request.




Questions

For questions regarding the Public Meetings Law training approval process, please contact:

Training Team

training@ogec.oregon.gov

(503) 378-5105