Al Charlson is a North Central Iowa farm kid, lifelong Iowan, and retired bank trust officer. This commentary was first published in the Waverly Democrat.

With reluctance and apprehension I am beginning 2026 by venturing back into the property tax jungle. In my September column, which focused on farmland taxes, I indicated I would return to address the property tax concerns of my in-town friends and neighbors.

In-town residential property taxes are more complicated for a couple of reasons. Of course, city residents pay city taxes—city finances could easily be the topic for an entire column. I had the opportunity to be a guest Waverly City Council member in January 2025, which included attending annual budget hearings. My overall impression was that our city operating departments are seriously committed to providing the services they deliver as efficiently as possible.

The other complicating factor is that houses are taxed on their estimated market value. That gets interesting. In 2024 the assessed value of our home was increased 15.3 percent. The Assessor only bumped up the value of the house by 6 percent, but increased the value of our lot by 56 percent.

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. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Stray Thoughts. 

Days removed from the winter solstice, when Iowa’s nights are the longest, we have another example of the absence of sunshine in Iowa government. And this example shows why the state legislature has much to do about openness and accountability when it convenes on January 12.

A recent court decision with ties to the collapse in May 2023 of an apartment building in Davenport highlights the urgent need for legislative action. The case involves more than the public’s right to know, considering that three people died in the collapse and rescue workers needed to amputate a survivor’s leg to free her from the rubble.

Sondra Feldstein is a farmer and business owner in Polk County and a plaintiff in the litigation discussed here.

Do you care about preserving farmland in Polk County?

Would you prefer that Bob Vander Plaats and his FAMiLY Leader organization not build a national conference center in rural Polk County?

Would you like for your elected representatives to follow the law and not give preferential treatment to powerful organizations?

Do you feel utterly helpless and need to make a difference?

A lawsuit making its way through the courts right now addresses all these issues.

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. 

Lyman Dillon resides in the dusty recesses of Iowa history for his role in 1839 in one of Iowa’s earliest infrastructure projects.

Dillon’s work also figures indirectly in a modern-day lesson on how not to run a government.

This how-not-to-do-it tutorial occurred earlier this month during a Jones County Board of Supervisors meeting. A similar lesson is playing out in Storm Lake to a growing audience of discontented residents there.

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. 

One of the frustrations of being a former newspaper editor is no longer having a few dozen reporters to pursue answers to questions going unasked and unanswered each day.

Two of my go-to questions were “why?” and “why not?” And my favorite open-ended query to a newsmaker was “explain this to me.”

I never believed newsmakers owed me answers to the questions I or my reporters asked. I was curious by nature. But the most important purpose, I sometimes reminded reluctant newsmakers, was the thirst for information John Q. Public and Jane A. Citizen had about the topics at hand.

All of this is a preamble to help you understand why I am a frustrated consumer of news and information now that I no longer lead a team of information gatherers.

Here are some examples of this frustration in real life:

Larry McBurney is a Democratic member of the Iowa House representing part of Urbandale.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ “Delivering Opportunities for Greater Efficiency” (DOGE) Task Force plans to recommend moving new public employees away from the Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System (IPERS) and into a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan. It’s being sold as a modern update, but the truth is this change would devastate Iowa’s public workforce. It’s a solution in search of a problem, and it targets one of the few benefits still keeping people in public service.

Let’s be clear about the reality for public employees in Iowa. Public sector wages are already 17.6 percent lower than in the private sector. Even after factoring in benefits, public employees still earn 14.5 percent less than their private counterparts.

Peggy Huppert retired in 2023 following a 43-year career with Iowa nonprofit organizations, including the American Cancer Society and NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) Iowa. She is a board member of LIFT Iowa and a long-time progressive political activist.

In September 2023, about 30 longtime Iowa Democrats came together on a Sunday morning to share their grief and anger about the political state of their world. Although they suspected things would get worse before they got better—they could not have predicted how very much worse—most are optimists by nature and, as such, desperately sought a path forward. And they found it.

In that room on that day, LIFT IOWA PAC was born.

Lauren Whitehead serves on the Solon City Council.

Earlier this month I toured the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and Johnson County Jail. In 2026, voters will likely decide on a bond to replace this failing facility, which serves all of Johnson County—including my city of Solon (population 3,000), about ten miles north of Iowa City. I’ve served for eight years as a city councilor and two as mayor pro tem.

What I saw during that visit was disturbing—but what concerns me even more is the growing pattern of political resistance to public safety infrastructure as a whole on the Board of Supervisors. This essay is both a fuller account of what I saw at the jail and a broader commentary on the challenges facing law enforcement, infrastructure, and rural governance in Johnson County today.

Dave Busiek spent 43 years in Iowa radio and TV newsrooms, the last 30 years as news director at KCCI-TV in Des Moines. He writes the Substack newsletter Dave Busiek on Media, where this essay first appeared.

Who’s watching city hall? Nobody—and that should scare you

If it seems like the local news you read and watch doesn’t cover the breadth of issues, and doesn’t cover them as well as they used to, you’re not imagining it.

A study released this month details a shocking decline in the number of journalists covering local news today, compared to 20 years ago.

Gwen Hope is a corn-blooded central Iowan prone to independent research and petting cats.

AI seems inescapable in 2025. Since 2023, easily-accessible LLMs like ChatGPT have soared as the common public concept of AI. The less public face are the AI tools that governments increasingly use to control and manage the populace. One of the most increasingly ubiquitous uses of these are AI mass surveillance systems.

Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems are preeminent examples of these tools. These systems are already along roadways across Iowa. In the United States, Flock Safety, a tech start-up founded in 2017 currently valued in the billions, develops, licenses, and leases the most common ALPR system software and hardware. Flock is an increasingly visible example, but they are one in a smattering of tech companies across the country cashing in by cashiering citizen privacy.

Flock’s system automatically records and processes still images and/or video through AI to create a unique “Vehicle Fingerprint™”. This “fingerprint” allows users to track a vehicle by license plate plus “type, make, color, state registration, missing/covered plates, bumper stickers, decals, roof racks, and bike racks” (source, pg. 5, 10). The company website boasts of more wide-ranging capabilities in addition.

Governments using ALPR systems are performing ongoing indiscriminate mass surveillance against anything vehicle-shaped (including bikes) on roadways, parking lots, and everywhere in-between. Private businesses and neighborhood associations can join these networks in support of this mass surveillance as well. This may concern you, this may not. However, these companies are developing far more intrusive systems that incorporate data panopticons and drones as part of a largely unchecked, unregulated tech boom. Let’s put the scale of surveillance into focus, shall we?

James Larew is an attorney in Iowa City who served as general counsel and chief of staff for former Governor Chet Culver. This post is a revised version of a letter he sent to Polk County supervisors as a public comment before their July 1 meeting.

We are on the cusp of a civil rights movement—a movement to protect citizens’ fundamental right to access clean water.

In the mid-1840s, our ancestors marveled at the “well-watered” rivers and creeks and the readily-available water supply.

But for the confluence of the abundant and clean waters of the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers, the City of Des Moines and the nearby communities would likely never have amounted to anything. Instead, that resource allowed for the founding of a capital city and a robust economy.

Clark Kauffman is deputy editor at Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is continuing to pursue a lawsuit against Winneshiek County and its sheriff, Dan Marx, for allegedly violating Iowa law by discouraging law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials.

In her latest court filings, Bird has criticized Marx, alleging the sheriff has, in essence, asserted that “federal immigration officials should not be trusted.”

Bird has also signaled that even if Marx were to comply with her demand that he disavow his past statements, the state is still obligated to strip Winneshiek County of funding, at least temporarily, based on those previous statements.

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. This essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, Stray Thoughts.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice focused on manners and goodness, two virtues sometimes forgotten today.

Shortly before the novel was published, our Founding Fathers settled on the free exchange of ideas as one of the fundamental concepts they wanted to guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But in 2025, an uncomfortable tug-of-war is occurring over pride and prejudice, expression and oppression.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Iowa’s DOGE task force, which Governor Kim Reynolds created earlier this year to channel the federal “Department of Government Efficiency,” discussed the possible consolidation of counties at its June 4 meeting.

Various committees, commissions, boards, organizations, individual legislators, and other Iowans take up the idea every so often. Like a steer at the Iowa State Fair, the proposal gets eyeballed, patted down, and evaluated. But unlike a State Fair entry, county consolidation is then written up in a report, and mothballed for a few years until someone else reopens the concept.

Consolidating the 99 counties is the zombie of Iowa think tanks. It doesn’t die, but it never really lives either. And there are good reasons for that.

Josh Mandelbaum represents Ward 3 on the Des Moines City Council.

Housing is one of the most important issues facing our community and our country right now. Nationwide, we have failed to build enough new housing to keep up with demand. In places where this trend is most pronounced, housing has become increasingly unaffordable, and more and more folks are housing burdened (more than 30 percent of their income goes towards housing) or simply priced out of where they want to live.

Compared to the most extreme examples, Des Moines is a relatively affordable community. But if we continue on our current trajectory, we will become less affordable and experience problems that we have seen elsewhere.

In that context, the city is working towards our first housing strategy plan. At our May 12 Council work session, Council heard a presentation on the draft plan. Since then, I have had a chance to read the entire draft plan. The housing strategy draft falls short of a comprehensive housing strategy and instead focuses almost exclusively on how to increase existing property values. The strategy lacks vision and a comprehensive approach to make housing better quality, more accessible, and more affordable for everyone in our community.

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.

The Iowa Supreme Court gave citizen engagement and accessibility to public meetings a much-needed boost on May 16 when ruling on an appeal of a lawsuit against the Iowa City Community School District.

The district’s practice of posting full videos of school board meetings on the internet for on-demand public viewing was at the heart of the case.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

Three months ago, Scott County Attorney Kelly Cunningham said she would not file criminal charges in the partial collapse of a six-story apartment building in downtown Davenport in 2023.

The decision came after an inquiry by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. In explaining her decision to the Quad-City Times, Cunningham cited the findings of the DCI report.

Now, she wants to keep the report secret.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

It usually takes a while for specific changes by the federal government to work their way down to the local level. But after about 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term, executive orders have begun to directly tighten the screws in Greene County.

Three examples:

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.

A constitutional showdown taking shape in southern Iowa’s Decatur County could put taxpayers on the hook financially to defend the county’s efforts to silence a critic of public officials there.

The Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit law firm, wrote to Decatur County Attorney Alan Wilson last week expressing its concerns about Wilson’s recent threat to Rita Audlehelm that she could be sued for defamation for her comments in a letter to the editor published in the Leon Journal-Reporter.

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared. Brooklyn Draisley, Cami Koons, and Kathie Obradovich contributed to this article.

As the Iowa legislature advanced past the second major deadline of the 2025 session, conversations on pipelines, Medicaid work requirements and new higher education requirements are continuing through surviving bills—though agreements have not necessarily been reached between the two Republican-controlled chambers.

The session’s second “funnel” deadline is another checkpoint for lawmakers during the legislative session, culling the bills that remain eligible for consideration as the Legislature nears the end of session. During the first funnel, bills were required to gain approval by a committee in one chamber to survive. In the second funnel, bills must have passed in floor debate in one chamber and gained committee approval in the other chamber to remain eligible.

There are several exceptions to this deadline, such as bills involving taxes, spending and government oversight components, and they include the property tax legislation proposed by Iowa lawmakers. Legislative leaders can also sponsor a bill and bring it forward without abiding by the deadline.

In addition, the language of a bills considered “dead” because of the funnel can still be added, at any point, as an amendment to a surviving bill.

There are also several bills that remain eligible for consideration by being placed on the “unfinished business” calendar, allowing them to remain up for consideration during the remainder of the session.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

Republicans at the Iowa capitol like to think they’re good at managing money.

They cut taxes. They’ve got a big surplus. They’re so proud of themselves, they want to teach the locals how to do it.

In her Condition of the State address in January, Governor Kim Reynolds said it was time to impose discipline on local governments, “because to pass meaningful property tax reform, we also need to be lean at the local level.”

But is the state really that much better at spending discipline than the locals?

Turns out, not so much.

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.

When Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and others discussed the need for a Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, Decatur County, Iowa, was still a half century off in the future.

Now, 236 years later, the county’s top law enforcement official needs a refresher on the intent of the 45 words the Founding Fathers settled on when drafting the First Amendment.

County Attorney Alan Wilson ought to review three of the five fundamental freedoms the First Amendment protects: the freedoms of speech, of the press, and to petition the government for a “redress of grievances.”

Exercising those rights is exactly what Rita Audlehelm of Van Wert did in a letter to the editor the Leon Journal-Reporter published on February 5.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

A recent Iowa Court of Appeals decision could substantially change how Iowa’s local government bodies—including county supervisors, city councils, and school boards—conduct meetings.

The decision centers on the legitimacy of closed sessions by those public bodies. The law at issue is Iowa Code Section 21.5(1)(i), part of the state’s open meetings law. Section 21.5 contains a list of conditions that permit closed meetings. The exemption at the heart of this case reads as follows:

To evaluate the professional competency of an individual whose appointment, hiring, performance, or discharge is being considered when necessary to prevent needless and irreparable injury to that individual’s reputation and that individual requests a closed session.

Dexter Merschbrock is a member of National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 373 from Cedar Rapids, spouse to a public school teacher, former school board member, and father of three. He is originally from Fort Madison. 

As this year’s Iowa legislative session gets underway, supporters of public schools can expect little in the way of substantive policy to make things better for our state’s students and families. Over the past two years, tens of thousands of Iowans came together to advocate against the destructive school voucher program and in support of the state’s Area Education Agencies. Those efforts, while valiant, did not sway most Republican legislators.

This year, with even larger Republican majorities in both chambers and no legislative elections coming this fall, I propose a different approach, to make our voices heard on the local level.

Cami Koons covers agriculture and the environment for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

Iowa counties can have their own review on proposed animal feeding operation permits if they adopt a construction evaluation resolution and submit it to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources by the end of January each year. 

But not all counties are taking this step, giving up the ability to have a say in the permitting process.

The resolutions allow counties to submit formal recommendations to DNR, send county officials to the DNR inspections of a site, appeal a DNR decision on a construction permit, and implement more stringent construction requirements through the state master matrix.

Bleeding Heartland set yet another record for guest contributions in 2024, with 416 posts involving 146 authors. (The previous record was 358 posts that more than 125 people wrote for this site in 2023.) I don’t know of any state-based political website that provides more quality coverage and commentary by guest contributors.

This year’s guest authors covered a wide range of topics, from public schools to local government, major employers, CO2 pipelines, notable events in Iowa history, and of course wildflowers.

They wrote about President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, Governor Kim Reynolds and her administration, Attorney General Brenna Bird, and of course former and future President Donald Trump.

During the legislative session, guest authors highlighted flaws in the governor’s plan to overhaul Area Education Agencies and the report that sought to justify it. They shared their own personal or professional experiences with AEAs. They covered other education proposals and explained why the state’s official school voucher numbers were misleading. They also covered bills that received less attention but could change many Iowans’ lives for better or worse.

During the 2024 campaign and its aftermath, guest authors wrote about presidential polling in Iowa and nationally, profiled candidates, and analyzed the election results from several angles.

Guest authors sounded the alarm about Iowa’s near-total abortion ban, unlawful drug testing at hospitals, and climate change impacts. They suggested ways to protect water and air quality, and flagged transparency problems in state and local government. They reviewed books that would interest many Bleeding Heartland readers.

They reflected on the lives of those who passed away this year, including Iowans Marcia Nichols, Bobby Washington, and Jim Leach, as well as Tim Kraft, who played an important role on some Iowa campaigns.

While many guest authors criticized Republican policies and politicians, some offered advice or constructive criticism to Democrats following the Iowa caucuses and another disappointing general election.

As noted below, some contributions by guest authors were among the most-viewed Bleeding Heartland posts of the year.

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. 

I was asked to speak this month at the annual conference of the National Freedom of Information Coalition. My remarks boiled down to a simple message: the public needs more information about their governments, not more secrecy from their governments.

I explained a troubling trend I see worming its way through local governments in Iowa. This trend cuts at the heart of the public meeting law that has served our state and its citizens well for 50 years.

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.

Dave Miglin is Chair of the Broadlawns Board of Trustees.

In January 2021, the people of Polk County made their voices heard and I was honored to be appointed as a Trustee for Broadlawns Medical Center to complete the term of retired Trustee, Mary Fuller. At that time, our county hospital was dealing with an extraordinary health care crisis (COVID-19) and internal transition brought by the retirement of longtime CEO Jody Jenner. Those months of transition and uncertainty could have easily derailed the positive momentum that was underway at Broadlawns – but it didn’t.

Together with my fellow Trustees, our hospital leadership, and community partners, Broadlawns not only survived these trying times, but it has flourished. Since I joined the Board, we have started or completed many projects that will help Polk County families for years to come, including:

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

As a former member of the Davenport Civil Rights Commission, I was sad to read in the Quad-City Times about a troubled relationship between the commission and city government. The same problems existed before I joined the commission in 2019, and persisted up to the day I stepped down in 2021 for health reasons.

During my time on the commission, we tried hard to work out several of the matters cited in Sarah Watson’s article about the dysfunctional relationship between the commission’s staff and the city’s professional staff. Our efforts had little or no effect. 

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers.

Many are concerned about the direction the Des Moines City Council is taking, particularly concerning the homeless population—some of our least fortunate neighbors and fellow citizens. This approach lays bare the apparent goal of the sitting councilors who support this policy: they do not believe unhoused folks deserve the same level of respect and dignity as other citizens. They are willing to cast them outside of the Des Moines city limits, if not completely outside of our society.

The proposed ordinance, to be considered at a July 22 meeting, flows from a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that in effect allows local governments to criminalize homelessness. In the case known as Grants Pass v Johnson, six conservative justices held that enforcing criminal laws against sleeping in public does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Strange that a city council consisting entirely of registered Democrats is eager to oust their most vulnerable constituents as soon as a Republican decision is handed down.

Tim Nelson is a Des Moines-based campaign staffer.

The Des Moines City Council will hold an emergency meeting on July 22 to decide whether or not to criminalize homelessness in the city.

The ordinance would allow the city to fine homeless people for sleeping in public spaces and would allow the city to get rid of what little property these people have faster.

As someone who has experienced homelessness, I find this ordinance cruel and ineffective.

Transparency advocates found something to celebrate in Governor Kim Reynolds’ final bill signings on May 17. The governor rejected House File 2539—her only veto of the Iowa legislature’s 2024 session—due to language that would have created an “enormous loophole” in the open meetings law, experts inside and outside state government warned.

Drafting a better bill to strengthen penalties for open meetings violations should be easy, if Iowa lawmakers return to the topic in 2025.

But fixing the process that allowed such a poorly-worded bill to reach the governor’s desk would be a tall order. Because while House File 2539 suffered a unique fate, its journey through the legislature illustrated broader problems with how the GOP-controlled House and Senate do business.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

You don’t often hear anyone extol the benefits of the COVID-19 pandemic. But I did a few weeks ago—when I stood before the Storm Lake Kiwanis club and talked about government transparency in Iowa.

I did not wade into the debate over masks, social distancing or vaccinations. It was a polite audience, but I was not silly enough to needlessly venture onto that thin ice.

What I said about the pandemic was this: State and local governments embraced, even if grudgingly, the benefits of live-streaming their board meetings during the pandemic so the public could watch from wherever they were.

John Clayton grew up on a farm in Poweshiek County, which he now farms. During his childhood, going to Meskwaki Pow-Wows in neighboring Tama County was the highlight of each summer. He is a 2024 candidate for Poweshiek County supervisor.

Minnesota officially adopted a new state flag on May 11, replacing the previous design, which had long been criticized for its depiction of a Native American on horseback with a spear and a white pioneer farming with a gun. The flag’s imagery was viewed by many as a symbol of Indigenous defeat and displacement, which was considered offensive by the state’s Dakota and Ojibwe tribes.

Poweshiek County in Iowa uses a caricature of a Native American as its icon. The Poweshiek County Board of Supervisors acknowledged in a public open meeting held on May 6 that the county’s icon caricature isn’t of Chief Poweshiek. 

Des Moines City Hall, photographed by James Steakley in 2009. Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

The Iowa legislature took an important step last week in voting to toughen penalties for state and local officials who violate a key government transparency tool, Iowa’s open meetings law.

Unfortunately, lawmakers’ actions may not be enough to reverse the love for secrecy that too many government boards and councils demonstrate. The latest example comes from Des Moines. 

Screenshot from KWQC’s video of the Iowa House Government Oversight Committee’s March 27 meeting. Randy Evans is speaking from the right side of the far end of the table.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

City officials in Davenport have managed to accomplish the impossible this year: They have gotten Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature to agree on something.

The two parties have bickered over topics like changes to the Area Education Agencies, liability protection for farm chemical manufacturers, removing gender balance requirements for state boards, and providing state tax money to arm teachers.

But the D’s and R’s came together in the House in February, voting 92-2 to increase the penalties for government officials who violate Iowa’s open meetings law. The bill, House File 2539, also requires a judge to remove a member of a government board who has twice violated the meetings law.

The Song of King Corn, by C. A. Murch (Verses 1 and 5)

The dews of heaven,
The rains that fall,
The fatness of earth,
I claim them all.
O’er mountain and plain
My praises ring,
O’er ocean and land
I am King! I am King!

Would you dethrone me?
Not so, not so.
Still the golden tide
Shall swell and flow;
The earth yield riches,
The toilers sing,
In the golden land
Where Corn is King.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

Disclosure: Dugan has filed several objections into the Summit Carbon Iowa Utilities Board dockets in opposition to the pipeline. Her most recent objections can be found here and here. She has neither sought nor received funding for her work.

On March 11, Kaylee Langrell, stakeholder relations manager for TurnKey Logistics, and Grant Terry, senior project manager for Summit Carbon Solutions, appeared before the Worth County Board of Supervisors to explain the newly expanded pipeline route incorporating POET and Valero ethanol plants in Iowa. Forty-six minutes into the meeting, Langrell stated the following:

For the second time in three years, a bill backed by top Iowa House Republicans failed to gain the 51 votes needed on the House floor. Senate File 455, which would restrict local government authority to regulate topsoil and stormwater, topped out at 49 votes in favor during floor debate on March 6. By the time the clerk closed the machine a few minutes later, yes votes had dropped to 44.

Such events are rare in any legislature, because leaders typically don’t bring a bill to the floor unless they know it will pass. No bill favored by the majority has failed an Iowa Senate floor vote for many years.

The last time Iowa House GOP leaders lost a floor vote was in March 2022, on an amendment that combined liability protection for trucking companies with limits on private employers requiring employees or customers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Republicans had a 60-40 majority at that time; the GOP advantage in the chamber has since grown to 64-36.

Majority Leader Matt Windschitl quickly filed a motion to reconsider Senate File 455, indicating leaders plan to call another vote on the bill soon. Even so, the episode revealed surprisingly deep opposition to this legislation in Republican ranks.

Photo of Davenport skyline is by WeaponizingArchitecture and available via Wikimedia Commons

The Iowa House has overwhelmingly passed a bill designed to improve local government compliance with the state’s open meetings and open records laws.

House File 2539, approved by 92 votes to 2 on February 22, would increase fines for members of a local government body who participated in an open meetings violation, from the current range of $100 to $500 to a range of $500 to $2,500. Penalties would be greater for those who “knowingly” participated in the violation: each could be fined between $5,000 and $12,500, compared to $1,000 to $2,500 under current law.

The bill would also require all elected or appointed public officials to complete a one- to two-hour training course on Iowa’s open meetings and open records laws (known as Chapter 21 and Chapter 22). The Iowa Public Information Board would provide the training, which officials would need to complete within 90 days of being elected, appointed, or sworn in.