Skip to main content

Independent public-interest journalism

Valor Investigations

Source-backed investigations, open public-records corpora, and free self-advocacy tools for people confronting elder care, guardianship, health-care, and government accountability failures in Eastern Oregon.

Read InvestigationsSend a Tip
Right now, they put price tags on the truth: $802.50 (Union County, to see its own lawyer's bills), $373.75 (Oregon courts, for two public court orders), $375,361 (an unvoted contract overrun we already proved).

Two agencies want money to see records that name their own spending. Help us pay it.

Give now
Read investigationsLong-form stories, public-records reporting, and documented case timelines.Use free toolsSelf-advocacy generators for records requests, complaints, and agency filings.Support the workTax-deductible support for records fees, infrastructure, filing costs, and research.
24 months
of records work
442k files
in searchable evidence systems
22 free tools
for public self-advocacy

Featured investigation

Latest public-records reporting

View all investigations
The Records WarLatest

What Two Months of Quiet Actually Bought

A bathtub, a phone call, and a federal contractor's paper trail

The records fights weren't the only thing happening. A family got a working bathtub. A congressional inquiry into a CMS hospice contractor turned up matching handwriting on both sides of a quality review.

More to read

The Records War
The Price Tags on Public Records

The Price Tags on Public Records

Three Agencies, One Message

Union County wants $802.50 before we can see its own lawyer's bills -- with up to $800 of that billed at $200 an hour, possibly by the very firm whose invoices we requested. The state courts say a journalist whose reporting drew 419,283 views can't "disseminate." And ODHS certified that a certified-mail appeal -- one the state's own mailroom logged as delivered -- doesn't exist. Meanwhile, the free records already show a $375,361 contract overrun nobody voted on. Here is where the records war stands, and what the money trail already proves.

Institutional Accountability
Before You Vote

Before You Vote

The Facts About the Swapped Newspaper, the Quiet Lawsuit, and Matt Scarfo's Third Term

Ballots reach Union County mailboxes this week. The county filed a lawsuit to strike voter-approved term limits, won uncontested, and now Commissioner Matt Scarfo is running for a third term. Here is what the court records, the ethics filings, and Scarfo's own campaign interview actually say when compared to the documentary record. A motion to set aside the judgment is pending in Union County Circuit Court. The Oregon Government Ethics Commission has voted 7-0 to open an investigation into Scarfo for using his official position for personal financial gain and for failing to declare an actual conflict of interest before voting.

Institutional Accountability
Published 65 Miles Away

Published 65 Miles Away

Union County Voters Approved Term Limits by 68%. Three Commissioners Quietly Killed Them.

In 2016, Union County voters passed term limits for county commissioners with overwhelming support. In 2025, all three sitting commissioners petitioned a court to strike them down -- and published the legally required notice in a Pendleton newspaper, 65 miles from La Grande. Nobody in Union County contested. A motion to set aside the judgment as void has been filed.

Submit a Tip