March turned my schedule upside down, threw it out the window, stomped on it – pick whichever cliché you like, this last day of this disorderly month has me reflecting a bit. The chaos brought by knee surgery for a torn ACL and meniscus, and a wide variety of planned and unplanned adventures return me to my blogging duties with an odd sense of calm. Civil unrest around the globe, the disasters in Japan, the political rhetoric in Washington and the game playing in Iowa’s Capitol would have produced a much more heated response from me 30 days ago. Today, I sit with my healing knee propped up pondering the time political figures waste making the simple complicated and the complicated somebody else’s problem.
The Paper Chase
Like many candidates, Governor Terry Branstad likes to claim he is a strong advocate for bringing the process of government into the sunshine so the people being served can observe their public servants in action and better understand the political decision processes. The Governor talks a pretty good game, but his promises don’t match his actions. I pick on the Governor not because he is alone in doing this. He has lots of company. But, he is at the top of Iowa’s political food chain, and he is one guy who could do something important to improve government accountability and he is refusing to do so.
Iowa Government Should Operate in a Glass House
The Governor is backing SF 430, a bill coursing its way through the legislative bodies that would create the Iowa Public Information Board and redefine open records and public meeting laws. Branstad and the bill’s backers are making the simple complicated and, worse, they want the credit for making government more open and accountable as long as they are exempt from the rules. That’s right; the bill exempts the governor, the legislature and the judiciary. The judiciary may have a greater need for closed doors than the others, but it is wrong to exempt the governor and legislators.
Governor Branstad claims the proposed law would create a burden for his office and according to a spokesman, “would create a tool that could effectively be used by anyone to disrupt and paralyze the functioning of the governor’s office.” Sorry, fellas, you are not that special. If the law is manageable for school boards, county governments and others, it is manageable for you.
I have been involved with government most of my adult life. Too many of those I have served with and observed seem to share Governor Branstad’s fear of openness. Good government has little to worry from operating in glass houses. In the age of computerized records, the creation and maintenance of electronic information files is easy. The best way for a governor to build consensus and an attitude of cooperation is to look and act the part of an open government believer.
Further, SF 430 creates the Iowa Public Information Board to oversee complaints from the public about the governments not exempted from the law. The new seven member body gets a ridiculously small budget of $155,000. This is a clever way to make open records and public meetings somebody else’s problem, while at the same time making sure they have hardly any resources to do anything about the problem. This proposed title of the law looks pretty, but it does little.
The solution is simple – all of government needs to be held to a simple standard. The process of governing needs to be open. Exemptions can and should be made in certain legal and sensitive matters. Complicated legal jargon and a citizen committee with no resources do little to help.
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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.
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