In the May 8, 2018, issue of the Register-Guard, EWEB Commissioner Steve Mital writes in a letter:
The campaign for a Eugene city auditor stems from a perceived need for more robust checks and balances in our city government. Perhaps the most powerful tool for forcing accountability is independent, thorough, and thoughtful local investigative reporting.
Communities across the nation, including ours, have experienced dramatic declines in local print reporting. We will be better off as a community by re-committing to buying and reading the paper than with either city auditor measure. Nothing exposes laziness, incompetence, or corruption and mobilizes a response from elected officials as effectively as a front-page story.