Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Talk about lousy optics — and I am not referring to out-of-style eyeglasses. Public perception is the topic for today.

A couple of recent news nuggets illustrate in different ways an uncomfortable fact of life in Iowa: too many state and local government officials are not comfortable with the public looking over their shoulders as they perform their official duties.

One case overflowing with irony involves the Des Moines County Board of Supervisors. The other involves State Treasurer Roby Smith.

I have been tracking issues like these since the earliest days of my newspaper career. Among the first watchdog stories I wrote involved a county supervisor who arranged to sell a county tractor to his son without any public bids.

Research studies and polls show the tax-paying public believes in the importance of government business being conducted in public, not in secret. Research also shows the public appreciates the work done by two-legged watchdogs, like journalists and concerned citizens, who attend government board and council meetings and shine the spotlight on how tax money is spent.

When the Des Moines County supervisors met in Burlington recently, they voted to kick out spectators and go into closed session to discuss with county department heads how the county handles requests for government records. 

You read that correctly. The supervisors closed their doors to discuss the county’s position on transparency.

Tracey Lamm reported for the Hawk Eye that the county’s information technology director told supervisors they needed to discuss the matter without the public, because other counties are facing many records requests from what he called data mining companies. Those companies create reports using government information and sell that information to the public.

Supervisors Chair Tom Broeker justified the closed meeting by pointing to a provision in the public meetings law that allows private discussions to “review or discuss records which are required or authorized by state or federal laws to be kept confidential.”

There’s just one problem with that justification. The records other counties are providing to these data companies are not required or authorized to be kept confidential. Often, those requests involve real estate records—which have been available to the public since pioneers crossed the Mississippi River nearly 200 years ago and began building houses in what is now Des Moines County.

Simply put, the supervisors did not want to discuss the public’s business with the public present. The supervisors failed to heed the very first paragraph of Iowa’s 50-year-old public meetings law — which says the law seeks to assure through open meetings that the basis and rationale of government decisions are easily accessible to the people.

The news about Treasurer Roby Smith grows out of a journalist’s request for records to show how often he works from his home in Davenport rather than his capitol office in Des Moines. In rejecting the records request, officials said, in effect, that providing the number of days Smith scanned his security badge and entered the capitol could jeopardize his safety.

No one wants to jeopardize Smith’s safety. But it is poppycock to assert that knowing how many days he was at the capitol last month somehow puts him at risk today.

There is an issue of his accountability to the public at stake here. He and other elected officials in Iowa government do not punch a timeclock when they are on the job. 

But a couple of facts have put Smith in an uncomfortable position in the public spotlight. Three years ago, Governor Kim Reynolds directed that most state government employees resume working from their offices, rather than their homes. U.S. Senator Joni Ernst has been a vocal critic of federal agencies allowing employees to work from home. She has called for more transparency on these work-from-home practices.

Journalist Laura Belin, who publishes the Bleeding Heartland news and commentary website, learned from public records that Smith has been reimbursed for his travel expenses for driving from Davenport to attend work-related meetings of the Iowa Lottery Board and the IPERS retirement system’s investment board, which meet away from the capitol complex. 

Smith has not been reimbursed for travel expenses between his home and his Capitol office.

When Belin asked for any calendars that showed the dates Smith was in the capitol, his staff said no such records existed. Belin also asked for the security card data showing the dates on which he used his card to enter the capitol.

Officials refused, citing an exemption to the public records statute that protects information and records “relating to security measures such as security and response plans, security codes and combinations, passwords, restricted area passes, keys, and security or response procedures.”

Belin was not asking for any of that. All she wanted was the number of days Smith used his badge to enter the capitol. Disclosing the number of days does not jeopardize the treasurer’s safety any more than releasing his reimbursement for trips he took by car or airplane.

As I told Belin, my hunch is the treasurer’s office does not want the public to know that Smith is spending most of his time working from Davenport.

I am OK if he chooses to work from home. I am not OK when his staff tries to keep from the public how often he goes to the capitol. 

I am OK with Des Moines County supervisors discussing how they should respond if companies come asking for large volumes of real estate and assessor data. I am not OK with those discussions occurring in private.

The legislature has made it clear conducting government business in public may cause inconvenience or embarrassment to public officials or others. But that is an important way citizens can hold their officials accountable.

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Top image: Screenshot from official video of Des Moines County Board of Supervisors meeting on October 1, 2024.