Legal Question in Criminal Law in Oregon

Re: cited, but city has no file..

When a person is cited by a police officer for a misdemeanor, the cite (usually with a police report) is sent to the DA's office to review. Someone (either a deputy DA or an intern) will review the case to determine if there is sufficient evidence to bring a charge and will then file a complaint with the court. When you show up for arraignment, you are arraigned based on this complaint, not the citation you received from the officer.

It's possible that the DA's office won't have charges filed with the court until the day before your court date (or even the day of, depending on the court's filing deadline), especially if they are backed up with lots of cases to review. If the court does not receive your file in time, then your case will probably be no-complainted, meaning a complaint was not filed by the DA. However, the DA could still bring charges against you later and could have 1 year or more to do so (this would depend on the Statute of Limitations for the charge).