According to a report by the Des Moines Register’s William Morris, published in this same edition of the Reporter, “Gov. Kim Reynolds is settling three lawsuits from journalists and others seeking public records after losing a key Iowa Supreme Court case this spring, agreeing to pay $175,000.”
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, several public records requests were made by various journalists. These requests were not fulfilled, and two journalists (Clark Kauffman of the Iowa Capital Dispatch and Laura Belin of the Bleeding Heartland blog) decided to sue the governor’s office.
This case went through the typical legal channels, ultimately resulting in a unanimous decision by the Iowa Supreme Court that said failure to fulfill records requests violated the state’s open records law.
The Iowa Supreme Court made the right decision, and when taken at face value this was a win for journalism.
When taking a deep dive into where that settlement money is coming from, though, it becomes apparent that this is a marginal win for journalism while being a burden for taxpayers to bear.
Keep in mind that journalists are taxpayers, too.
The Iowa Appeal Board’s lone dissenting vote on the conditions of the settlement came from State Auditor Rob Sand, who, coincidentally, was just in Harrison County last Wednesday.
“The people who are choosing to break the law and not provide records are supposed to be personally accountable for that,” Sand said at City Park in Missouri Valley. “They’re supposed to pay a fine, they’re supposed to pay the attorney’s fees. That makes sense.”
We agree.
“If we have people who work in government, and they can just not fulfill records and then use taxpayer money to pay for the cost of hiding from taxpayers the public’s information, they are not going to respond,” Sand continued.
As it tends to happen, rules are broken and made to work in the government’s favor at the expense of the taxpayer.
A spokesperson for Gov. Reynolds, Deputy Communications Director Kollin Crompton, made the following statement, which was quoted in the Register’s article:
“The COVID-19 response put unprecedented demands on the Governor’s team to meet the immediate needs of Iowans. As a result, responses to requests were unintentionally delayed, which is not acceptable. Our office has assessed our internal processes and we continue to reevaluate the process to improve timeliness.”
While this statement sounds like an acknowledgment of wrongdoing, how accountable can one really be when someone else pays the cost? The law remained the law before, during and after the pandemic that we all dealt with.
So, as a journalism entity, we appreciate the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision to uphold open records laws. After that, though, those of us who chose the journalism path are taxpayers just like you, and politicians will continue to abuse taxpayer money so long as it’s used to bail them out from true accountability.
