Lawmakers wag their fingers with new Ian Roberts Resume Fraud law

Come July, Iowa employers may want to add an ominous warning on their job application forms: tell a lie and you could go to jail.

That’s right — no more puffing the resume with false degrees from the University of Okoboji or Faber College. 

And do not claim to have chauffeur’s license when you lack the permit needed to drive a truck.

That’s because Gov. Kim Reynolds signed House File 2337 into law last week, making it a crime to knowingly provide false academic degrees or credentials for the purpose of obtaining employment or other personal gain.

The legislation does not use these words, but the bill could have been named the Ian Roberts Resume Fraud Act. 

Legislators saw an urgent need to act following the arrest last September of the Des Moines Public Schools superintendent. The conduct described in the new law closely tracks the misrepresentations by Roberts — fabricated academic degrees and honors that came to light only after he was jailed on immigration and gun charges.

The language in the bill the governor approved on April 16 applies to a job candidate’s academic degrees or academic credentials. The legislation also extends to when a person “knowingly and with intent” falsely represents oneself as having a license in a regulated professional or occupation.

Those positions subject to criminal penalties for misrepresentation span a wide swath of licensed work — from physicians, nurses and pharmacists, to plumbers, real estate appraisers, barbers and nursing home administrators, with many others in there, too.

The new law is punishable as a simple misdemeanor. Violators are subject to jail terms of up to 30 days and fines ranging from $105 to $855.

In fairness, though, the new law does have a loophole grounded in what an Iowa Supreme Court justice once described as the rough and tumble, Wild West world of politics. 

So, lying in politics remains largely protected, largely unpunished and largely accepted as a way of life, even though deception used to get a regular job can now land you in jail.

Indeed, the politicians who write our criminal laws are as comfortable wagging a legal finger at others who falsify their credentials and as they are in preserving a system that embraces candidates who pad their resumes or misstate their qualifications.

Who does not remember the state senator from Ottumwa and his official biography listing that he had a business degree. Turns out, he passed a training course offered through the Sizzler restaurant chain.

In politics, however, candidates and officeholders operate in a space where even demonstrably false statements are often shielded as protected speech, leaving voters — not prosecutors — to sort truth from fiction.

The problem for the voters remains that often they learn of the politician’s lie only after the votes are counted and the election is called.

Plus, when political candidates present an embellished version of their own record — polished, selective or outright false — or when they use manipulative or deceptive campaign practices, the consequences are far less certain. That’s because it is not front-page news to find out that a politician lied.

This means that when it comes to political candidates, the burden falls on voters to separate fact from fiction.

The new law offers little recourse for campaign deception, even when it is deliberate. And the ballot box recourse may have to wait until the next two-year or four-year election cycle.

So, there is another lesson the politicians buried in the new Ian Roberts Resume Fraud law: “Do as I say. Don’t do as I do.