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Nearly every city in Oregon is required to submit annual financial reports to the state, but some in the Portland area have been delinquent for years.
North Plains, a small but fast growing city in Washington County with a $36 million biennial budget, has not undergone a financial audit since 2021. City Manager Bill Reid attributed the years-long lapse to “growing pains,” including continued turnover in accounting staff, consultants and city administration. The city has missed the last three audits due to the state, but Reid said they have a plan to catch up by the summer.
Fairview, an east Multnomah County city with a $43.4 million budget, has missed both the fiscal year 2023 and 2024 audits. It is also working to catch up.
Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat, announced earlier this month that hundreds of local governments, school districts and other municipalities failed to file timely financial audits or reports, meant to promote good financial management and transparency.
In North Plains, Reid said the city was set to begin the audit for the 2022 fiscal year days after the secretary of state’s announcement. Reid said the other hurdle is the resources required to prepare such reports.
“It takes a great deal of staff time and effort to source, hire and onboard replacement staff and consultants critical to audit preparation,” Reid said in an email.
North Plains has been burned by lacking financial oversight in the past. In 2008, a former court supervisor was accused of embezzling $211,000 from the city. The employee pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated first-degree theft.
In Fairview, City Manager Nathan George told The Oregonian/OregonLive that when he took the job in December 2024, the city was four years behind on audits. He said that the staff had simply not done the work before he arrived.
The city has since finished audits for 2021 and 2022, and is currently working on 2023, George said.
He said a new finance director and assistance from a third-party auditor have helped put them on a better path.
“The city of Fairview has a good City Council and mayor that are supporting a team doing the right thing,” George said.
Most municipalities are required to submit financial reports to the Secretary of State within 180 days of the end of the public body’s fiscal year. Spokesperson Tess Seger said the state sends notices to alert entities that they are out of compliance.
Beyond publishing the list of entities who haven’t turned over financial records, the Secretary of State has no recourse to penalize delinquent filers, Seger said.
That’s because state lawmakers in 2023 eliminated the financial penalty for cities and other governments that fail to file their required financial reports. Previously, the secretary of state had the ability to trigger the withholding of 10% of funds that state agencies would otherwise send to the local governments, if they failed to file the required financial reports. Then-Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, a Democrat, asked lawmakers to take away her ability to withhold the funds.
Staff from Fagan’s office told lawmakers the penalty had not increased compliance, although they offered no data to back up the claim. They also said that withholding the funds posed a burden on the state. Lobbyists for the League of Oregon Cities, special district governments and accountants supported the change and there was no public opposition.
As of December, 238 governments across Oregon have “delinquent reports,” the Secretary of State’s office said. Oregon’s public bodies are required under state law to submit annual audit reports, or self-reported expenditure information.
“While I’m glad to see some improvement in these numbers, too many municipalities still aren’t meeting their deadlines,” Secretary of State Tobias Read said in a statement.
The Secretary of State’s office said that number is far lower than in May 2025, when 385 public entities were delinquent. Some of those delays were attributed to “a lack of adequate resources and persistent issues around staffing,” the office said.
The secretary of state’s audit division started publishing the list of delinquent filers in 2017 in an effort to hold local government officials accountable. Those bodies include all local governments, school districts and public corporations beholden to local governments.
Over two dozen entities have failed to hand over reports for the last three years. Among them are small cities like North Plains and Depoe Bay, Baker County and multiple special districts, some of which now risk dissolution, the report said. Dissolution is only on the table for special districts, and a special district can only be dissolved by the entity that oversees it.
There are also four charter schools, two of them in Sheridan school district, which have not turned in required audits in the last three years.
Read said taxpayers should expect local governing bodies to comply with the law.
“Oregonians rely on these financial reports to keep their local governments accountable, and they have every right to expect municipalities to provide this information promptly,” Read said in a statement.
The full report can be found on the Secretary of State’s website.