by Herb Strentz

The Iowa Public Information Board, created by the 2012 Legislature, underscores two aspects of public life in our state:

The Board is a tribute to how hard-working citizens and a legislator or two can accomplish something despite the intransigence of other legislators, school boards, city councils and the like. The six-year struggle to create the board benefitted, too, from the support of Gov. Terry Branstad.

The Board also is a monument to government secrecy in Iowa. It would not be needed if public agencies followed the spirit of the Iowa laws on open meetings and access to public records. Instead, public agencies exploit the discretion granted them under those laws.

Government agencies in Iowa may talk “transparency” but are addicted to secrecy.

That addiction is why the Information Board was created. Given the penchant for secrecy, the public needed some way to resolve questions of openness in a more efficient and less expensive fashion.

The Information Board will not become operational for a year, needing time to hire staff, get a budget together, etc. As an editorial in The Des Moines Register noted, there is reason for optimism for at least finding better ways to deal with questions of openness and access.

Fine. But the secrecy addicts won’t kick the habit.

And a Public Information Board can do little about it when a governmental agency exercises its discretion and opts for secrecy — agencies often are allowed to do that when choosing to apply or stretch certain legal exemptions to openness.

The Board will have an impact when it comes to egregious violations of the law; perhaps that’s the most we can hope for. It will still be up to the public and the press to demand openness. They can’t pass the buck to the Information Board.

And buck-passing is a risk — particularly given the optimism about all the Public Information Board can accomplish.

Better go slow on that.

Connecticut has had a Freedom of Information Commission since 1975. Its duties and powers are similar to those of the new Iowa board. The Connecticut commission has had annual budgets of up to $3 million or so — about 10 times what Iowa will spend. Yet compliance with openness laws in Connecticut is, at best, on par with compliance in other states, based on periodic access-audits conducted by the press and others in various states.

New York State has had a state committee on open government since 1974. Its executive director is Robert Freeman; the accomplishments of the committee are due largely to the respect and influence Freeman has enjoyed — deservedly so — in New York State for more than 35 years! You don’t legislate that kind of impact.

The new Iowa board will do its share, but the keys to enforcing openness in Iowa remain what they have always been — citizen involvement and aggressive news coverage, both in short supply in Iowa these days.

In short supply, but not absent.

Consider a significant aspect of news coverage in the saga of former Des Moines School Superintendent Nancy Sebring, her emails and how the Des Moines School Board tried to cover it all up.

For my money, a significant aspect was not the disclosure of the emails, but the story that a veteran Des Moines Register reporter, Perry Beeman, wrote about a closed school-board meeting that hastened Sebring’s departure — prior to the surfacing of the emails.

Beeman pressed school board president Teree Caldwell-Johnson as to why a closed meeting was necessary and whether it was lawful. She misled him and the public by saying that nothing unfavorable to Sebring was discussed and offering other bizarre views of what really went on.

The events that followed proved to be an embarrassment to all, except Beeman.
That questioning style of reporting is what may fall victim to the creation of a public information board, which will have enough to do without being hailed as a cure to government secrecy in Iowa.

The Board’s powers do not include changing the secrecy mindset of public agencies in Iowa. That burden remains on the public and the press. CV

Herb Strentz is a retired administrator and professor in the Drake School of Journalism and Mass Communication and writes occasional columns for Cityview.