Mar. 15—OTTUMWA — When government entities don’t live up to their legal obligations of providing access to government records and meetings, Iowans — unlike many states in the country — have a free alternative to costly court battles. However, many advocates and experts on the topic say the state entity isn’t always helpful when citizens take on government over its secrecy.

The Iowa Public Information Board receives hundreds of contacts each year, resulting in around 137 formal complaints from around the state, according to the board’s annual report from 2023.

The board has been in action for more than a decade, created by Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, with the help of the Iowa Legislature in 2012. Its mandate was to provide a free and efficient way for Iowans to resolve issues with government bodies over disputes with Iowa’s open meetings and open records laws. The board additionally is meant to be a resource for governments and citizens alike to answer questions and learn more about Iowa’s transparency laws.

But while formal cases to the board increase slightly each year, there are still some who prefer to bypass the free IPIB and instead head straight to state or federal court.

The Iowa Freedom of Information Council is a nonprofit organization that advocates and fights for government transparency. Its executive director Randy Evans has been involved extensively both in court cases and IPIB complaints dealing with government records and meetings. He said straightforward issues are typically handled well by the IPIB, but that the court system better handles more complex cases.

“The IPIB has done a good job of providing citizens with an official analysis of simple, straightforward questions about government meetings and records,” Evans said. “The IPIB has a less-than-satisfactory track record on more complicated issues. The legislation that created the IPIB envisioned the board acting with the same authority as a judge in applying legal analysis and legal precedents. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that the board has bent over backward to embrace the rationale of government lawyers, rather than the legislative intent that is stated in these statutes.”

The IPIB has also been criticized at times over its speed in handling cases. While Iowans have the choice of whether to file a case with the IPIB or in district court, any district court cases are stayed until the IPIB completes its review.

The Autumn Steel Case

Perhaps one of the board’s most notable cases in its history deals with the Burlington Police Department’s fatal shooting of Autumn Steele in 2015 while police were responding to a domestic disturbance. When they arrived, Autumn was arguing with her husband in the yard. The family dog bit one of the officers, causing him to fire his weapon but he slipped in the snow and instead hit Autumn, killing her.

Officials kept most details a secret, and the woman’s family and the Burlington Hawk Eye newspaper fought to obtain additional records, including video.

The cases persisted within the board for several years, and at one point the Iowa Office of Ombudsman found in a 25-page report that IPIB even violated Iowa’s open meetings laws itself as it held closed-door meetings. It had held public votes as required, but didn’t divulge the specifics of the actions it took.

Ultimately, records related to the shooting were released, but not because of the board. Rather, an independent action in federal court prompted the release of much of the information made public.

Three years into the case, Administrative Law Judge Karen Doland ruled that police video captured on dash and body cameras, as well as 911 call recordings, do not get blanket confidentiality. The judge ordered the police department to make the records public.

The board made its final decision on Feb. 21, 2019. It had determined a seven-page statement that had been released about the incident was all that was necessary to comply with Iowa’s open records law. The board wrote it “shares the complainants’ frustration with the lack of publicly available information after a police-involved shooting.”

The Bettendorf School District

After the Uvalde, Texas school shooting, the Bettendorf superintendent and all but one member of the school board met with a few hundred parents to discuss issues at the district’s middle school relating to student behavior and harassment. Journalists were specifically blocked from attendance, and parents were instructed not to record the meeting.

A citizen went to the Iowa Public Information Board to complain about what they alleged was an illegal meeting of the board. Her complaint was originally filed in June 2022. It was resolved in March 2023 by dismissal, because the IPIB ruled that there was not probable cause of a violation based solely on the presence of board members.

The school district had advanced the argument that because board members did not sit together and make a policy decision, the “workshop” did not count as an official meeting. Thus, the district determined the meeting did not violate Iowa’s open meetings law, and IPIB adopted that argument in their ultimate decision.

A few months after IPIB dismissed the case, the school district settled a lawsuit that local media had filed over the same meeting. The settlement included an admission by the school district that the meeting they held was illegal. They also reimbursed $6,500 in attorney fees and committed to following the law in the future.

Evans said the case was perhaps the best illustration of IPIB’s key weakness against government entities.

“The IPIB inexplicably decided this was not an official meeting in the eyes of the public meetings law and dismissed the case — even though the very first paragraph of the statute says that questions of ambiguity should be resolved in favor of openness,” Evans said. “And a couple of months later, the school board settled the Iowa FOI Council’s lawsuit by admitting it violated the law when it barred the media and other interested people from attending the meeting.”

The Governor

The IPIB does not have jurisdiction over the governor’s office, so when it came to her office’s secrecy during the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists and only had the option to sue.

They did. And they won.

At times, Gov. Kim Reynolds’ staff took as many as 18 months to deliver public records sought by several media agencies during the pandemic. Many of those records were not divulged until the lawsuit was filed by Iowa Capital Dispatch, Bleeding Heartland and the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, as well as their individual representatives Clark Kauffman, Laura Belin and Randy Evans, respectively.

After Reynolds’ office provided several records, it had appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court for the case’s dismissal arguing that it was moot once the governor provided records. Generally, Iowa law provides 20 calendar days to determine if a record is confidential or not.

Reynolds argued that the law doesn’t set a timeliness requirement for responding to requests, but also argued her office would not apply to her office as she is the head of the executive branch and the court doesn’t have authority to decide how the governor’s staff prioritizes its duties which she likened to a political question.

The court unanimously rejected that argument.

“An interpretation (of the statute) that requires timely production promotes ‘free and open examination of public records,'” Justice David May wrote in the court’s decision. “An interpretation that condones unlimited delay would hamper the ‘free and open examination of public records.'”

The court also cited a law review article prepared for then-Gov. Terry Branstad said, “providing information quickly and efficiently demystifies government.” The article was written in 2013 by Brenna Bird, a Republican who is now Iowa’s attorney general and defended Reynolds in the lawsuit.

After the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling, Reynolds ultimately settled with the media entities. The settlement included a $135,000 reimbursement for the media organization’s legal expenses, while essentially putting the governor’s office under court supervision for one year as it related to open records disputes.

Kyle Ocker is the editor of the Ottumwa Courier and the Oskaloosa Herald. He can be reached at kocker@ottumwacourier.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, and on Threads @Kyle_Ocker.