How to file a request
1. Figure out who holds the record
Oregon's Public Records Law (ORS 192.311–192.478) covers every state and local agency — city bureaus, the county, school districts, Metro, TriMet. Ask the agency that actually does the work; portland.gov lists a records contact for each city bureau.
2. Ask in writing, specifically
Email works. Describe the records (not the question you're trying to answer), a date range, and ask for machine-readable format (CSV) when it's data. The City of Portland accepts requests through its online portal; other agencies take email.
3. Know the fee rules
Agencies can only charge their actual cost of responding, and they must give you a fee estimate over $25 before doing the work. You can ask for a fee waiver or reduction when disclosure primarily benefits the public — say so explicitly, and explain why.
4. Know your deadlines and appeal rights
The agency must acknowledge your request within 5 business days, and complete it as soon as practicable without unreasonable delay — 15 business days is the statutory benchmark. If you're denied, you can petition the District Attorney (local agencies) or Attorney General (state agencies) for review. It's free.
This is practical guidance, not legal advice. The Oregon DOJ publishes the authoritative Public Records and Meetings Manual.
What we're requesting
When a dashboard says “data not available,” this is where we do something about it. Every request we file is tracked here, and fulfilled records get published back into the open data commons.
911 call answer and dispatch times, monthly detail
Bureau of Emergency Communications (BOEC)
The safety dashboard currently hand-encodes response times from the BOEC director's report PDFs. Machine-readable monthly data would let us track emergency response performance automatically and accurately.
Records sought: Monthly call volumes, answer times (including 20-second answer rate), and dispatch times by priority level, 2019-present, in CSV or any machine-readable format.
Shelter capacity and nightly utilization data
Joint Office of Homeless Services (JOHS)
The homelessness dashboard cannot report shelter utilization because the data behind JOHS's public Tableau dashboard is not downloadable. The underlying data would show whether shelter capacity is meeting need.
Records sought: Nightly (or weekly) shelter bed capacity, occupancy, and turn-away counts by shelter type, 2022-present, in CSV or any machine-readable format.
Know a record Portland should see?
Suggest a records request — or tell us about one you've filed — and we'll add it to the public tracker.
Suggest a request