IOWA VOTERS HAVE SPENT this fall hearing two men who want to be the next governor call each other rich, rootless and dishonest. What Iowans have not seen, however, are documents that would settle much of the argument.

Neither Zach Lahn nor Rob Sand has released his tax returns, and Iowa journalists, in interviews, debates and editorials, have failed to press the candidates to do so.

The candidates themselves made their opponent’s money and home the subjects of this race.

Lahn’s August television ad called Sand a billionaire, and Lahn’s campaign says Sand’s political career has been financed by his father-in-law’s chemical fortune.

Sand’s campaign says Lahn spends more time in Kansas than in Iowa. And at their first debate, the two accused each other of lying about residency and family wealth.

The Des Moines Register deserves credit for reporting in May that Lahn maintains a home in Kansas and flies his personal airplane there often. The Kansas Reflector reported that Lahn voted in Kansas elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022 before registering to vote in Iowa in October 2024. The New York Times reported last month that he voted in Iowa in November 2024 but asked that his ballot be mailed to him in Kansas.

KCRG-TV found no public evidence that Sand himself is a billionaire. His state ethics disclosure lists one source of income, his $103,000 state auditor’s salary. But Iowa’s disclosure law asks for sources of income, not for amounts.

The candidates’ tax returns would not reveal their net worth, but they would show their income and where it comes from. They would show whether a candidate filed as an Iowa resident or a nonresident. They also would show charitable giving.

Five years of returns would tell voters whether Sand lives on an auditor’s salary or on family money. They would tell voters whether Lahn has been paying taxes as an Iowan or a Kansan.

DISCLOSURE OF THIS KIND by top politicians used to be routine.

Terry Branstad released his returns in his first race for governor in 1982. His opponent, Roxanne Conlin, followed suit. Her returns showed that she and her husband paid no Iowa income tax in 1981, in large part because of tax shelters.

In 1998, Tom Vilsack released five years of returns. In 2002, he called for a state law requiring candidates for governor to release their tax and net worth records. No law passed, and release of these records remains voluntary.

In 2010, Chet Culver released his tax information, as he had in 2006. Branstad showed reporters a year of returns, then released them annually while governor.

In 2018, Kim Reynolds posted 10 years of returns online and challenged Fred Hubbell to match her. Hubbell almost did. After months of promises, his campaign let reporters view summaries of one year’s returns but provided no copies.

The returns showed more than $3 million in income but not where it came from. Pressed on the matter, a Hubbell adviser pointed elsewhere: “Donald Trump has refused to do anything,” the aide said.

That exchange marked the beginning of the darkness that hangs over campaigns today.

TRUMP, BY REFUSING in 2016 to release returns as every modern presidential nominee before him had done, showed that a candidate could say no and pay no price. Hubbell showed Iowa candidates that they could promise, stall and deliver less.

Iowa is not alone.

The Boston Globe’s editorial board wrote in June that politicians have felt emboldened since 2016 to keep their finances secret. All three major candidates for Massachusetts governor refused the Globe’s request for five years of returns.

In Maryland, Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, and Republican Dan Cox refused a Baltimore television station’s request for three years of returns.

The difference is that newsrooms in those states asked, and their readers and viewers know the answer.

Next door to Iowa, asking still works.

In Illinois, billionaire Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, released portions of his 2025 returns on October 15, as he has every year since 2017. Reporters then asked Republican Darren Bailey’s campaign whether he would follow suit and reported that Bailey had not.

Four years ago, Bailey told the Chicago Sun-Times he saw no reason to release his returns. Eleven weeks later, he released the first two pages of five years of returns to take the issue off the table.

THE NORM OF POLITICIANS releasing their returns never rested on a legal requirement. It rested on journalists’ unceasing demands and candidate acknowledgement that disclosures to voters are important.

This fall in Iowa, Sand and Lahn met in three televised debates. None of the published accounts shows a debate moderator asking either man for his tax returns.

This is a meek press.

Fact-checking an ad that calls a man a billionaire is worthwhile. Asking for the documents that would settle the question, then sharing the candidates’ responses, or non-responses, is better.

The winners of this game of silence are the campaigns. Both get to keep slinging mud without fear that a tax document will wash it off.

The losers are Iowa voters, who will choose a governor without the facts that could answer the questions and allegations.

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THERE IS A SIMPLE WAY to assess how much Iowa governments think ordinary citizens deserve to know, and engage in the debate, when officials have an initiative they are eager to undertake.

Call it the parking lot test.

The recent whirlwind of economic events in Iowa suggests that this time, the state’s decision-making process gave citizens far less opportunity for review and participation than they routinely receive when city councils and school boards make much smaller and less consequential decisions.

The issue came into focus last month with events surrounding the proposed $15 billion steel mill in Lee County.

JUST FOUR DAYS AFTER President Donald Trump announced the project in the Oval Office on September 28, Governor Kim Reynolds called a special session of the Legislature and lawmakers rushed to approve to a bill raising Iowa taxpayers’ potential commitment to the project to $1.36 billion. That is just under $500 for every person living in the state.

Lawmakers and the governor acted without providing ordinary Iowans with a copy of the bill or a meaningful opportunity to study the proposal and offer their views on such a significant commitment of government resources to a single project.

Others can decide whether the steel mill is a sound investment for taxpayers or is the latest example of politicians spotting a shiny promise of new jobs and new industry. My concerns here deal with the rapid pace of this project and the message — intended or not — that citizen questions and independent research are obstacles to push aside, rather than an integral part of the process that should be embraced.

Put simply, why should the tax incentives come first and the public’s full understanding come later?

THIS IS NOT HOW Iowa’s cities, counties and school districts typically operate. They do not tell residents, “Trust us. We’ll figure out the details and answer your questions later — after we have committed your tax money.”

When a local government wants to pave a parking lot, for example, it provides notice, places the project on a future meeting agenda and then holds a public meeting at which people can weigh in with their opinions and questions. Then the government board votes.

Most local officials embrace this process as a way to explain their recommendations and build public support for their decisions. The greater the taxpayers’ and government’s commitment of public money, the greater the public’s need for information, time and opportunity to be heard.

If this is important for a school parking lot, why shouldn’t citizens receive at least as much opportunity to understand and comment before a decision is made that will cost Iowa taxpayers $1 billion over 10 years — especially when the state general fund stands at $9.6 billion per year and the state has been spending more money than it takes in?

That is not how information has flowed concerning the steel mill.

Yes, Iowans know the developer is Mesabi Metallics. They know it is owned by a business group based in India. The governor and president talked about its $15 billion price and its annual production capacity of up to 10 million tons of steel.

Iowans’ eyes have lit up over the 6,000 temporary construction jobs, as well as 1,750 permanent plant jobs that Mesabi says will pay an average of $48 per hour.

BUT THE RUSH from the Oval Office to the Legislature’s chambers left plenty of important questions unanswered. For example:

How much truck, rail or barge traffic will the project create hauling iron ore from Minnesota? How much electricity and water will the mill consume each year? Who will pay for expanding the power grid and water supply? What will happen to the plant’s wastewater, and who will pay for treating it?

What about air quality? Will the plant’s emissions resemble those from older steel mills, or will Mesabi’s electric furnaces be cleaner? What emission standards will apply?

And what about local property tax incentives?

Even legislators had substantive concerns that deserved more examination. Senator Dan Dawson, a Council Bluffs Republican, voted against the changes to the incentive law after voicing his objections.

It is wrong, he said, for state government to pay 10 percent of the cost of any business project. Long-standing Iowa companies with more employees than Mesabi promises will pay higher tax rates because of these incentives, Dawson added.

THESE ARE THE KINDS of questions Iowans have been able to get answered about pipelines, livestock confinements, computer data centers — and school parking lots. And those projects have not involved $1 billion in taxpayer incentives.

The Mesabi assistance would surpass the previous record for a single project — $109 million for a fertilizer plant built by an Egyptian company in Lee County in 2017.

Mesabi’s supporters believe the project will be a significant boost to Iowa’s economy. But more transparency does not mean opposition. Iowans deserve enough information and time to judge the project for themselves and understand what the public is buying.

If that is the standard Iowa applies before paving a simple school parking lot, it seems a reasonable standard to apply before Iowa paves the way for a billion-dollar tax break for a steel plant.

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An invitation

Paid subscribers to Stray Thoughts are invited to a holiday party the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative is hosting on December 10, beginning at 7 p.m., at the World Food Prize headquarters in Des Moines. Please join your favorite writers and fellow readers for drinks, dessert and plenty of conversation. Click here to RSVP.

Government of the people belongs to the people.

So, it should come as no surprise that one of their most frequent concerns is how government spends taxpayers’ money.

Those concerns took me to Davenport a few weeks ago, where I spent more than an hour testifying in a lawsuit filed by Dr. Allen Diercks, a concerned citizen, against the City of Eldridge.

Diercks sued after the city blocked his efforts to obtain documents that would help answer that fundamental question: How is the city government spending tax money?

My testimony echoed Diercks’ position: It is the public’s money, so the community should be able to see the details of how government officials spend it.

A week later, another Iowa judge provided one crystal-clear reason why that public interest is warranted and why the community deserves prompt access to such information, not obstacles.

DETAILS FROM THE two cases show some Iowa governments rely on flimsy excuses to keep the rest of us in the dark about spending that can involve big money. Both cases center on bills submitted by outside lawyers for work they did for the cities. The Eldridge case is about getting copies of the invoices. The Storm Lake case shows what those bills can reveal.

Like tax collectors, utilities and credit card companies, lawyers send bills for one reason: to get paid. Lawyers do not send invoices to provide legal advice. That occurs in meetings, telephone calls and written letters and memos, not in end-of-the-month bookkeeping documents.

Too often, however, government officials try to prevent public access to these invoices by claiming portions contain information protected by attorney-client privilege.

Diercks is a frequent thorn in the side of Quad Cities governments with his requests for government records showing how tax money is used — or abused.

In 2024, he asked for a year’s worth of billing invoices submitted to Eldridge by Allison Wright, the city’s attorney. The city provided 43 pages of bills but blacked out many details — such as dates work was performed, general descriptions of that work, the time spent on each task, the lawyer performing the work, and that lawyer’s hourly rate.

The only meaningful details Diercks could see were the total amount billed each month and the mailing address of Wright’s law firm.

Not satisfied, he sued the city.

The district judge who heard the case on October 7 is expected to rule later this year whether the city was justified in making sweeping redactions. I testified the blacked-out details were the most egregious I have seen in many years of examining invoices from government lawyers.

A WEEK AFTER THE Eldridge trial, another Iowa judge, Shayne Mayer, issued a ruling that demonstrated why the public should care what government lawyers charge.

Mayer’s ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the City of Storm Lake against Buena Vista County over the improper allocation of property tax revenue for 12 years. The money should have gone to the city, but the county mistakenly distributed it to local schools and other taxing bodies.

Storm Lake’s decision to sue Buena Vista County rather than negotiate a resolution to the embarrassing error has led to considerable second-guessing. The case amounts to taxpayers suing taxpayers, and taxpayers are certain to lose in the end.

Many believe a settlement would be wiser — and less expensive — than each side hiring high-priced Des Moines attorneys to fight the dispute in court. The case has dragged on for two years, with the trial not expected until next summer.

The Storm Lake Times Pilot wrote in a recent editorial, “The public officials should settle their mindless dispute. … All the public officials are eager to head into battle using someone else’s money — the taxpayer’s money. … This shows a lack of respect for the taxpayers from the city, the county and the lawyers.”

JUDGE MAYER’S examination of attorney invoices underscores why taxpayers — people like Allen Diercks — deserve access to unredacted bills submitted by lawyers hired to represent government.

In the Storm Lake-Buena Vista County case, the judge raised concerns about the bills submitted to Storm Lake by the Dorsey & Whitney law firm.

For example, the judge said the firm’s lawyers charged above-market hourly rates — $730 for one partner and $660 for another. In contrast, attorneys at Nyemaster Goode billed Buena Vista County at rates of $370, $350 and $250 per hour. The judge said prevailing market rates in northwest Iowa supported a reasonable hourly rate of $515 for each Dorsey & Whitney lawyer — a reduction of roughly 25 percent.

The judge also docked Dorsey & Whitney for having two lawyers attend hearings and for time they spent conferring with each other. He said one lawyer would have sufficed, bringing down costs from the combined $1,400 per hour they billed the city.

The lesson of these cases is clear: Transparency is a cornerstone of government accountability, but taxpayers cannot meaningfully evaluate public spending if the details are hidden from view simply because lawyers are involved.

When government pays the bill, the public should have the right to examine it.

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An invitation

Paid subscribers to Stray Thoughts are invited to a holiday reception the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative is hosting on December 10 in Des Moines. The event begins at 7 p.m. at the World Food Prize headquarters along the Des Moines River downtown. Please join fellow subscribers and Iowa Writers’ Collaborative authors for drinks, desserts and conversation. Click here to RSVP.

WHEN A CITY PLANS something big, it should not check driver’s licenses at the door.

That is what happened Monday night in Woodward. The City Council cancelled its regular meeting and instead held what it called a “community conversation” in the Woodward-Granger High School auditorium.

The notice required attendees to show a photo ID with a Woodward address or a piece of mail with their name and Woodward address before they could enter.

Security officers and police were there to oversee the screening of IDs. I was there as president of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and was turned away. So was a rural Dallas County resident interested in data centers. A KCCI reporter saw at least two others who were refused entry.

Inside, Mayor Todd Folkerts and three Microsoft officials announced that the company had closed on the purchase of about 600 acres in the Woodward Eco Business Park, on the city’s south side, for a data center campus.

About 200 residents listened for 90 minutes. Folkerts said the council would need to approve a development agreement and a site plan before the project could proceed.

Fewer than a majority of the five council members attended, so the gathering likely falls outside Iowa’s open meetings law. Legal or not, the residency screening was a mistake. It treated a regional decision as a private family matter.

CONSIDER WHAT a data center brings. Microsoft’s representatives told the crowd a closed-loop cooling system would not affect the city’s water supply and buying electricity from a wholesaler would protect residential rates.

Those are promises about water and electricity, and neither resource stops at a city limit. New power lines would cross farm fields. Construction trucks would use county roads. Storm water runs downhill without regard to annexation maps or city boundaries.

A farm family just outside town will live with the data center’s lights, noise and traffic as surely as any resident of Main Street. That farm family pays property taxes, too — just not to the City of Woodward.

Iowa law already recognizes that a city’s choices reach past its borders. Section 354.9 of the Iowa Code allows a city to review subdivision plats as far as two miles beyond its city limits, giving the city a voice over how its rural neighbors’ land is developed.

ON MONDAY, WOODWARD denied those same neighbors a seat in the auditorium.

The venue underscored that point. Woodward-Granger High School belongs to the Woodward-Granger Community School District, which has its central offices in Granger and reaches into Dallas, Boone and Polk counties.

Taxpayers in Granger and the surrounding countryside helped pay for that auditorium. The city used the school district’s building and then told people without a Woodward address to stay outside.

Iowa’s local governments cooperate all the time. Chapter 28E of the Iowa Code allows cities, counties and other public bodies to share services and work together for mutual advantage. The Legislature has directed the courts to interpret that law liberally.

Twelve central Iowa cities, utilities and water districts, including the Xenia Rural Water District, formed Central Iowa Water Works under a 28E agreement to plan the region’s drinking water together.

Metro Waste Authority grew out of a 28E agreement among Des Moines-area governments dating to 1969. Polk County and its cities fund emergency management jointly through another 28E agreement.

NONE OF THESE partnerships asks a neighbor for proof of address before letting the person listen to a discussion of matters of mutual concern.

A residents-only rule divides communities. It turns the city limit into a wall, as if the people on the far side have no stake in what happens on the near side.

This also invites the same treatment in return. If Granger, Madrid or Dallas County someday puts a landfill on Woodward’s doorstep, Woodward residents will want to attend meetings where such a development is discussed.

They should get in. Everyone else should, too.

Monday’s rule was also unneighborly.

Picture a farmer who plans a hog confinement on his fence line and invites only his own household to hear the details. The people downwind would not call that a community conversation. They would call it a snub.

I TOLD KCCI the requirement that only Woodward residents could attend Monday’s information session “erodes the trust and confidence” in Woodward city government. And the damage spreads beyond Woodward.

Woodward still has time to fix this. The development agreement and site plan still need council approval. The council will have to take these up at regular, properly noticed meetings that are open to anyone who wants to attend.

Woodward officials should invite the Dallas County Board of Supervisors, the Woodward-Granger school board and nearby townships to hear the plan. It should publish what Microsoft has said about water, power and traffic.

Woodward’s neighbors will live with this data center. They deserve to hear about it, ask about it and argue about it in the same room as everyone else.

A project this large deserves the widest audience — not the narrowest.

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THE SCHOOL FIELD TRIP tragedy last week at Lake Macbride State Park again demonstrated the adage that a rumor can travel halfway around the globe while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

Government silence during a public crisis or mass-casualty event creates an information vacuum that rumor, speculation and misinformation quickly fill.

As the events last week north of Iowa City show, often that noise is simply wrong.

It need not be that way — if government officials would run toward the truth as fast as first responders head toward danger.

Almost always, the rumors, speculation, misinformation and errors are avoidable if government officials follow a simple rule of public service: When a serious public incident occurs, become the go-to source of information by releasing facts as quickly and frequently as you can.

Informing the public does not mean disclosing details that could jeopardize an ongoing investigation. It can mean requesting patience while families of victims are notified. And it certainly does not mean officials should speculate about the cause before an investigation ends.

But it does mean telling the public what officials know, which often is a lot.

The tragedy on September 22 illustrates this.

JOHNSON COUNTY sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the park adjacent to the Coralville Reservoir about 12:10 p.m. after receiving a report of people in the lake. As law officers and firefighters converged, a helicopter circled overhead.

Yet, basic facts about the incident remained unavailable for nearly nine hours — until the sheriff’s office released a statement shortly after 9 p.m.

By then, bloggers and social-media users had posted claims about what occurred. One alleged a student died and a teacher was in critical condition. Another reported a teacher tried to rescue two students who had entered a spillway near the dam.

Facebook comments repeated other claims, including that a teacher and child were dead. Victim names readily circulated on the web even though they cited no sources.

When law enforcement and Iowa City school officials finally provided details that night about what had transpired, facts started to separate from fiction — but only for those who lingered to track developments about the incident.

That is precisely the problem. Information-hungry people often do not distinguish reality from rumor when authorities with factual details are not talking. The public may accept initial speculation as final facts.

THIS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT for abandoning caution.

Instead, it is a call to recognize the reality of communications in 2026 — when smartphone video cameras are everywhere and social media wirelessly connects the masses to remote locations.

It also means that when tax money goes for salaries of government information officers, as in the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office and Iowa City Community School District, these employees should work from the outset of a crisis or tragedy to inform the community, rather than waiting for the end of the day’s search and recovery efforts.

By the time sheriff’s and school officials ultimately provided the public with information about the tragedy, those facts were overshadowed by a rumor mill containing a mixture of accurate and false details. Some erroneous information remains in circulation even now.

There is no lid on information until government speaks, nor should there be. But once emergency vehicles arrive and roads are blocked, people who see or hear about the events start posting on Facebook and X. The public learns about a tragedy, whether government officials provide information or not.

The choice officials face at times like this is not between saying everything and saying nothing. A better option is telling what is known and specifying what is not.

Explaining what cannot be released and why beats silence every time. Updating the public as additional facts are verified also ensures accuracy.

That progression protects the official investigation and allows for compassion while still helping the public receive reliable information about what occurred.

CONSIDER WHAT HAPPENED last March 24 outside St. Luke the Evangelist Catholic School in Ankeny.

A car left the school driveway, jumped the curb and struck down 16 children. Ambulances rushed the youngsters to Des Moines hospitals, while police sought to determine the cause of the crash.

Two months later, police announced that the 76-year-old driver had mistakenly pressed the accelerator instead of the brake. No criminal charges would be filed. Because of that decision, police said the driver’s name would not be made public.

By then, however, the name of a grandparent was circulating informally and police had released a log of the day’s events. But a lot of unanswered questions remained.

That it took two months for authorities to provide basic incident information, and did so with heavy redactions, raises another problem with withholding information.

When the identity of a key participant in a serious incident is kept confidential, reasonable people ask why and wonder whether a different driver would be afforded the same consideration under similar circumstances. The public cannot independently assess whether a person has received preferential treatment because of community standing or connections with public officials.

Transparency is important in maintaining public confidence in government decisions, even when officials reach a defensible conclusion about criminal charges. Plus, being open and prompt with the facts fosters accountability and understanding, just as silence leads to rumor and fiction.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS cannot prevent people from posting speculation on social media. It is not their job to prevent fringe or sensational websites from publishing gossip and invective.

But officials also should not expect the public to remain accommodating when community members hunger for facts and knowledge and have the right to measure performance of their government.

In times of crisis, facts protect as well as inform.

And considering that timely, authoritative information is the best antidote to misinformation, law enforcement officials should embrace their duty to inform.

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A modern “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

Catch up on my recent posts

If you are a new “Stray Thoughts” reader, here are a couple of recent posts you may have missed:

When dealing with the Iowa Public Information Board, being a mind-reader helps.

That is one takeaway from the board’s dismissal last week of a public-records complaint against Attorney General Brenna Bird’s office.

The request was made on December 4, 2024 by Chad Brewbaker, who asked the attorney general for the fees her office paid to private attorneys. His complaint to the Iowa Public Information Board alleged he never received an acknowledgement of his request or the data showing how taxpayer money was spent.

Beginning in January 2025 and continuing until he filed the IPIB complaint on August 11, Brewbaker said he emailed the attorney general each month to remind her of his request and ask, “Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.”

HIS CASE HIGHLIGHTS a fundamental problem with Iowa’s public-records law:

It does not say how long a government body may take to respond to a records request. The case also illustrates the problems Iowans can face when seeking help from the Public Information Board.

The Legislature created the board in 2012 to provide an efficient way for people to resolve disputes involving access to government meetings and records without the time and expense of a lawsuit. The law requires complaints to be filed within 60 days of when a violation occurred.

The public-records statute does not set a deadline for government officials to comply with access requests. Instead, the law merely says “a good-faith reasonable delay” is permissible. Even so, Public Information Board guidance in 2014 said a records custodian “shall comply with the request as soon as feasible.”

The Iowa Supreme Court twice has held undue delays in providing responsive records violate the statute. In one case involving Gov. Kim Reynolds, journalists Laura Belin and Clark Kauffman and the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, the court said a failure to respond to a records request was the same as an outright denial of the request.

THAT BRINGS US BACK to Brewbaker, an Urbandale resident who often seeks government records as he pushes for accountability.

On Thursday, without discussion, the Public Information Board unanimously threw out his complaint as untimely.

The board’s dismissal treats an ignored request for records as a knowable violation within roughly two months. The board also made clear that follow-up requests for the same records do not restart the 60-day filing clock.

While Iowa’s public-records law has never explicitly said how long a government body may take to answer a request, the IPIB may have backhandedly provided an answer in the Brewbaker decision.

The board’s order said Brewbaker missed his 60-day filing deadline by a wide margin. He “could have become aware” of the attorney general’s delay “within the weeks following his initial request being ignored,” the order said. At the latest, he could have known “within the following month or two after receiving no response.”

Brewbaker had an answer for that analysis. He argued the attorney general’s violation was “active, continuous, and renewed on an ongoing, monthly basis.”

In other words, he asserted each unanswered follow-up email to the attorney general was a fresh refusal that reset the 60-day deadline.

The Public Information Board rejected that continuing-violation theory. “Follow-up emails cannot be used to extend or circumvent the strict sixty-day filing deadline,” the order said.

The board reasoned repeated requests for the same records do not pause the deadline or start a new one. The clock runs from the first stretch of silence, not the most recent one.

HERE IS WHERE the person seeking government records needs to be a mind-reader.

The requester must somehow determine when a permissible delay becomes an unlawful one and then file a complaint with the Public Information Board within 60 days.

Common sense would say a 60-day filing period cannot start before there is a violation to complain about. If silence for a few weeks is still a lawful, reasonable delay, there is nothing yet to be aware of or complaint about.

But if the clock begins with the request and nothing is heard for an unreasonable but unspecified time, the IPIB order effectively treats that passage of time as the silent refusal to provide the records.

That leaves the requester with a difficult question: Exactly when does a lawful delay become an unlawful one?

Based on the board’s reasoning, an ignored request becomes a knowable violation of the public-records law by at least the 60th day. A requester who waits beyond that point to file a complaint risks losing the board’s assistance, as Brewbaker learned.

Effectively, that says you’d better file your complaint by day 59 after your request has gone without acknowledgement or production of the documents you sought.

THAT IS A SHORT WINDOW for someone who may be left to guess whether a government agency is processing a request, experiencing a legitimate delay or simply ignoring it.

Efforts to extend the filing period to 90 days have failed to gain traction in the Legislature in recent years. A courthouse deadline for a lawsuit is significantly longer — two full years — but filing at the Public Information Board cuts off the direct path to court.

There is a lesson here for people seeking government records: If an agency has ignored your request for more than two months, the IPIB’s 60-day window may already be closed and a civil lawsuit in district court may be the only remaining avenue to enforce the violation.

So much for a speedy and efficient remedy.

And so much for a clear and predictable standard and timeline for pursuing a case at the Public Information Board — unless, of course, you are a clairvoyant who can read the minds of government officials.

Score this one for Attorney General Bird and the Public Information Board, where silence beat action and the clock ran out on an Iowan before he may have known it was ticking.

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A modern “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

Here is a recent Stray Thoughts you may have missed. Grab a cup of coffee and dive in:

SUCCESSION PLANNING and public celebration typically accompany executive retirements. They provide for an orderly leadership transition and public acknowledgment of a job well done.

So, two simple questions arise whenever top government employees leave their jobs in hastily announced retirements — and receive more than the customary coffee-and-cookies going-away reception in return for signing customized contracts containing waivers, releases and promises not to criticize.

What exactly are we paying for?

And why?

The recent “retirements” of David Dostal, the Cedar Rapids police chief, and Scott Ourth, Polk County’s director of general services, illustrate why these questions and answers are important.

DOSTAL, 57, WHO WAS paid about $190,000 annually, announced earlier this month he is retiring, effective January 1, after serving as chief for the past two and a half years. He has been a police officer in Cedar Rapids for nearly 35 years.

When Dostal became chief in 2024, Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell praised his advancement through the ranks of the police department, his selection over top national police leaders and his commitment to leading with integrity.

Nothing said then suggested any doubts about his qualifications or ability to oversee the department. But these facts do:

Although his retirement does not take effect until January 1, Dostal’s last day of work will be October 1. From October 2 through December 31, he will be on paid administrative leave and will continue receiving city health insurance.

Within 10 days after his retirement date, Dostal will receive a lump-sum severance payment of $191,096 — equal to six months’ salary plus his accrued, unused time off.

While Dostal’s departure is portrayed as a voluntary retirement, he was handed a copy of the retirement agreement on September 1 and was given 21 days to accept or reject it.

In addition, the agreement binds both Dostal and city officials from making any “derogatory, disparaging, or negative remarks … likely to cause harm to the reputation, business, or interests of the other.”

Does that sound like a typical retirement arrangement?

MEANWHILE, IN DES MOINES, Scott Ourth, 67, a former Warren County state legislator, has been employed by Polk County for four years. His annual salary was $158,700. His retirement took effect September 22, although his last day at the office was weeks earlier, on July 31.

Ourth’s retirement was sweetened by payment of six months’ salary for what the county called a “department head benefit,” plus a $2,000 payout for sick leave. He also will have county-paid health insurance for 12 months after retirement.

As with Dostal, Ourth and Polk County agreed in writing “not to make any public statements which materially disparage the other party” unless required by court order.

Those arrangements deserve scrutiny in light of two additional facts not mentioned in the retirement agreement:

Ourth is the subject of two sexual-harassment lawsuits filed against Polk County by two female county employees. And his deputy, Thomas Alessio, was fired by Polk County earlier this summer over unspecified “inappropriate behaviors and conduct.” Alessio, unlike Ourth, received no compensation on his way out the door beyond his earned wages.

MAKE NO MISTAKE, like private employees, public servants should get paid what they earned, including retirement payments calculated under established rules and policies.

But when a government employee leaves with tens of thousands of dollars in additional taxpayer-funded compensation for unexplained reasons — particularly after only a few years in their current position — it is appropriate to ask why. That question becomes even more important when the agreement restricts what the former employee and employer can say about each other.

At that point, a retirement package stops being merely a personnel matter and becomes a public accountability issue.

If the departing executive receives compensation beyond what was earned on the job, the public deserves to know the circumstances and rationale for the agreement, including the reasons for any mutual promises to say only good things about one another.

Not every detail of a government employee’s life should become public. But the justification for spending public money should not be hidden behind the words “personnel matter” or a ginned-up excuse of retirement.

Normal retirement benefits are earned as part of long-term compensation and retention plans. A lucrative settlement negotiated outside programs available to all employees is different.

The public deserves enough information to determine whether the additional payments represent a legitimate obligation or an extraordinary exercise of administrative discretion.

CITY AND COUNTY governments are not private corporations. Their money belongs to the public, and their leaders and employees are entrusted with the public’s confidence.

Taxpayers are rightly uncomfortable with the idea their tax money might be used to purchase silence about the circumstances surrounding any public employee’s departure, especially when the employee is a highly compensated leader who leaves precipitously.

The public should not have to wonder whether a large payment was made because an employee was exceptionally valuable, because the government exposed itself to legal liability, because elected officials made a mistake, or because those in charge simply wanted a controversy to go away quietly.

“Personnel matter” should not become a magic phrase that turns government expenditures into private secrets and public doubt.

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A modern “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

IN RECENT WEEKS, people from Cherokee, Des Moines and Ottumwa have contacted the Iowa Freedom of Information Council with concerns about the refusal of local officials to share documents distributed to city council and school board members before they meet.

Typically, Iowa government boards and councils send their members document packets before each meeting so they have important background facts to help them make informed decisions. The materials often include staff reports on agenda topics, financial statements and analyses, proposed contracts, correspondence and recommended agreements.

The board packets promote informed governance. Members have time to read and digest relevant materials, study the facts, and prepare any questions in the days leading up to the public meeting.

Citizens deserve no less of an opportunity.

WHILE MANY IOWA governmental bodies get that and make their board packets available to the public at the same time members receive them, a troubling number of boards and councils choose to withhold these materials until the meetings end — and, importantly, well after decisions are made.

That is not the transparency Iowa lawmakers had in mind when they wrote the state’s “sunshine” laws 50 years ago.

The purposes of those laws, and the underlying tenets of good government, are thwarted when the Cherokee city administrator withholds a fact sheet about proposed tax assistance for a hotel development that she provided to city council members and then discussed with them during the public council meeting.

It equally is wrong for the Des Moines city attorney to provide council members — but not the public — with an agreement he negotiated to settle a legal dispute the city is defending. Withholding the agreement until after the council meeting prevents residents from offering their informed opinions or asking important questions before council members vote to settle claims and spend tax money.

And it makes no sense for the Ottumwa school board to routinely withhold its entire board packet until the end of each board meeting — or, even worse, until several days after the meet ends.

IOWA LAW REQUIRES government boards to post their meeting agendas at least 24 hours before a meeting starts. The agenda tells the public what will be discussed. The supporting packet provides important background details that inform board members — and that should inform the public, too.

If not by duty, then by law government boards should be required to make their meeting packets available at the same time the materials are distributed to board members.

First, there is no question that once those documents are provided to the boards and councils, the documents become public records and Iowa law allows them to be inspected and copied on demand.

So, why make the public ask and wait for something a council or board could post on its website right next to the meeting notice and tentative agenda? Or, why not have several copies of the packet available at the public meeting, the same way the Iowa Public Information Board does?

Yes, there can be legitimate exceptions for some of the packet contents. Certain confidential materials may properly be excluded from the publicly available packet — such as security matters, student expulsions from school, or documents that will be discussed in a closed session.

But those should be the exceptions. There should not be a broad shield or subterfuge to keep the public in the dark until a meeting is over and decisions have been made.

Some neighbors might read every word of these packets. Others may not read a thing. And some may examine only those documents relating to issues that directly affect them, their property or their pocketbook.

THE POINT OF TRANSPARENCY is not that everyone will read everything. The point is that every person has the ability to examine these materials and engage with government officials if they choose before and as decisions are made.

There is a practical reason for government boards and councils to embrace this broad standard of openness: Transparency builds public trust and understanding.

People do not have to agree with every decision their government leaders make. But if certain documents are important enough for school board members or city council members to read and weigh before making decisions, those documents are important for the public to see and review, too.

So, why should members of boards and councils in Cherokee, Des Moines and Ottumwa get to see documents and information before a public meeting that ordinary citizens cannot see until afterward — sometimes days later?

There is no justification for any answer other than: “They shouldn’t.”

If public boards will not make these documents available before their meetings, then the Legislature should act next session to make it mandatory that these so-called “board packets” or “council packets” be made public before the meetings.

Open meetings deserve open packets.

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Read what my colleagues have to say

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

YOU WOULD THINK a school district readily knows its A-B-C’s.

Not the Des Moines Public Schools — at least not when informing the public what its 6,600 employees were paid during the academic year that ended June 30.

Yes, grade school teachers still call roll in alphabetical order. And next spring’s high school graduates will walk across the stage as their names are announced, starting with the A’s and moving through to the Z’s.

But when publishing a list of its employees last month and how much taxpayers paid each one, the Des Moines Public Schools’ alphabet started with Tiara S. Ziegler. Next was Pia Marcell Stites, and the list continued in an anything-but-organized manner.

Was this an attempt to hide names by randomness and make it difficult to compare salaries? Or was this the result of a brain freeze, much as when the school board hired Ian Roberts as superintendent without first doing a comprehensive background check and then fired him soon after he was arrested on federal immigration and gun charges?

A LONGSTANDING IOWA LAW requires public school districts to publish a list of their employees and wages each year. Des Moines complied with that law on July 20, taking up six full pages with an official notice in The Des Moines Register.

The publication requirement is simple. Lawmakers wanted every district to inform their residents who is being paid and how much each received. This is a basic principle of accountable government.

So what does it say about the Des Moines district’s commitment to transparency when it puts the names in willy-nilly order? Taxpayers paid the $5,126 cost for publication of this notice.

Technically, perhaps, the district can say it met the letter of the compensation-disclosure law. The information is there. The salaries are public. Mission accomplished.

But transparency should not be a game of technicalities.

Randomizing thousands of names may satisfy a narrow interpretation of disclosure. But the way Des Moines did this undermines the purpose of the requirement and invites the public to distrust the district’s commitment to transparency and accountability.

If citizen activists, journalists, watchdog groups and curious taxpayers must sift through a vast maze of names simply to determine how much certain employees were paid, Des Moines is guilty of placing an unnecessary obstacle between the public and the information people have a right to see and evaluate.

Few government expenditures are more significant — or more deserving of public attention — than the salaries employees receive.

Unlike private business, government agencies do not generate their own revenue in a competitive marketplace. They collect taxes and fees under authority granted by the citizens. Citizens are the ultimate shareholders of government, and they have a right to know how their tax money is spent.

DES MOINES’ DECISION to publish the employee compensation in a scattershot fashion represents a deeper problem than just poor optics. The way officials arranged the names suggests an attempt to circumvent the purpose of the requirement rather than embracing the responsibility.

This is not the first time the Des Moines district has acted as if its residents were an annoyance. We saw this last October, when the school board accepted the immediate resignation of Robert Lundin, the district’s chief academic officer, but decided — for reasons never explained to the public — to continue paying him his $195,600 salary through June 30 of this year.

There is an important distinction between making information technically available and making it meaningfully accessible.

A school district genuinely committed to openness should recognize there are legitimate reasons for easily allowing people to examine salaries and other financial details. They may want to better understand how their tax money is spent, compare compensation among departments, identify unusually high salaries, investigate changes in compensation over time, or simply see what their teachers and administrators are paid.

This is not an extravagant demand. And that is why the random ordering of Des Moines school employee wages looks so bad. I’ve asked school officials for an explanation. Their complete reply appears below.

When the district makes the salaries hard to use, the public rightfully asks why. One wishes school leaders better understood how fragile the bond of trust is between the district and its constituents.

Secrecy breeds suspicion. And obfuscation invites contempt.

Being open and accountable is a mindset, and once you understand how it serves the public good, it is as easy as 1-2-3.

What Des Moines told me

Here is the complete statement from Amanda Lewis, the communications director for the Des Moines Public Schools, in response to my question about the district’s rationale for presenting the employee salary list in random fashion:

Hi Randy,

Per Iowa Code 279.35, “Salaries paid to individuals regularly employed by the district shall only be published annually and the publication shall include the total amount of the annual salary of each employee.” The Code does not contain any language on how the information is provided.

That being said, the district provided the Register with the attached sortable Excel file. They chose how to publish it.

One note about the district’s statement, which I received Tuesday night: The Excel computer file the district referenced in the email to me presented the employee names in the same random order as the names were published by the Des Moines Register.

Here’s the Des Moines list

Are you interested in the compensation paid to Des Moines Public Schools employees? Here are links that take you to the information contained in the district’s public notice last month. But our list appears first in alphabetical order and then from the highest amount to the lowest.

Fy26 Gross Wages Alpha

204KB ∙ XLSX file

Download

Download

Fy26 Gross Wages Amount

202KB ∙ XLSX file

Download

Download

What about your district?

“Stray Thoughts” readers are located throughout Iowa. Please let me know whether your local school district publishes its employee salary list in random order, too. The list appears in your local newspaper, typically between late July and late autumn. Email me at IowaFOICouncil [at] gmail.com.

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Your “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

GAMES SHOWS HAVE one virtue Iowa’s open-records enforcement system does not: Winners and losers know on the spot what prizes are theirs to keep.

Hendrik Van Pelt learned this firsthand.

In February, the Guttenberg man won a case before the Iowa Court of Appeals when the judges affirmed a district court decision in his favor and reversed the Iowa Public Information Board’s dismissal of his public-records complaint against the City of West Des Moines.

The outcome seemed like a citizen just beat the government transparency agency. But not so fast. Don Pardo, tell Mr. Van Pelt what he’s won.

That’s right, a no-expense-paid trip back to the IPIB.

THE COURT REMANDED Van Pelt’s complaint to the very agency that dismissed the case three years ago, appealed when it lost in district court, and then lost again in February.

That is Van Pelt’s prize. At least to this point.

In 2023, he used the public records law to ask West Des Moines for a copy of its new contract with Flock Group Inc., a company that installs and operates license-plate-reader cameras. He specifically asked for a copy of the Flock deployment plan and map of Flock camera locations in the city.

Flock has similar agreements to install its surveillance cameras along roads in hundreds of cities and counties in the United States. The cameras record vehicle information and provide it to law enforcement agencies in a mappable database officers can search while investigating crimes.

But these data-gathering networks are controversial. The Washington Post reported recently on officers misusing the information for personal purposes. Authorities have accused at least 50 law officers of using the cameras to stalk former spouses and ex-girlfriends. In other communities, Flock has provided local surveillance data to federal agencies without the city’s knowledge.

VAN PELT WANTS TO KNOW where West Des Moines put its cameras.

The city gave him the Flock contract without attaching the deployment plan or map. The city argued it had nothing to produce because Flock created and kept the map. While city staff reviewed it online before approving it, West Des Moines says it never printed or saved a copy.

So, the city claims there is no public record to give Van Pelt.

In October 2023, he filed complaint against West Des Moines with the IPIB. The board staff asked a few questions of the city after the IPIB’s December 2023 board meeting. Erika Eckley, the IPIB executive director at the time, then prepared a proposed decision finding Van Pelt’s complaint legally insufficient because the city provided him all records it possessed.

The full board reviewed and approved her proposed dismissal order in January 2024.

THE SHAPE OF THAT RULING is worth noting. The board decided a public record did not exist and closed the file without requiring the city to prove anything. Instead, the IPIB took the city at its word.

The following month, Van Pelt sued in Polk County District Court, asking the court to review the IPIB decision. The district court ruled for him, and the IPIB then appealed its loss.

Earlier this year, the Court of Appeals affirmed the district court decision with rationale that sounds self-evident: The Flock deployment plan and map were expressly incorporated into the West Des Moines contract, so the city, as a party to the contract, always has a right to the document.

“Regardless of its decision to retain a physical copy, the contract belongs to the City just as much as it belongs to Flock,” the Court of Appeals said.

In effect, the appeals judges said a city cannot make a record disappear simply by arranging for a vendor to hold it.

THIS IS WHERE the irony of Hendrik Van Pelt’s case stops being funny.

Because he first took his grievance to the IPIB rather than starting with the district court, the only route for the Court of Appeals was through Iowa’s administrative procedures law. That law says a reviewing court may affirm the agency action or remand the matter to the IPIB for further proceedings. That law also puts the burden of showing prejudice on plaintiffs like Van Pelt.

Now, look at what would have occurred if Van Pelt chose to go directly to court to challenge West Des Moines’ action:

There, the open-records law’s enforcement provision would have guided the court. It says that after a requester shows a government body is covered by the law, that records sought are government documents, and that the body refused to produce them, the burden shifts to the government.

And if the court finds the government body violated the law, the court is commanded to issue an injunction directing the government to release the records and also order the government to pay costs and reasonable attorney fees to the requester.

The records are the same. The city is the same. The three years are the same. But down one path lies a mandatory fee award and an order to produce the records in question. Down the other path lies a remand back to the government agency that botched the case in the first place, along with the added uncertainty of placing your fate in the hands of a government entity that litigated against you.

THERE IS ANOTHER DIFFERENCE: Van Pelt’s appellate court victory still has not put the requested map in his hands.

That’s because the remanded case has stalled since the Courts of Appeals decision in February. IPIB members last met on Aug. 1, but they did not take action on Van Pelt’s case, despite the appeals court’s clear decision.

Compounding this, no one told Van Pelt during his quest for the Flock camera map about the fork in the road that exists when a government agency declines to fulfill a public records request.

The Iowa Public Information Board law includes a section captioned, “Election of remedies.” It provides that anyone may seek enforcement of the public meetings or public records statutes by choosing to file a lawsuit challenging the government body’s decision or, in the alternative, by filing a complaint with the IPIB.

The practical consequence is this: If the IPIB rules against people like Van Pelt and they decide to file an appeal in court, a judge will follow Iowa’s administrative procedures law. The burden of proof flips, deference attaches to the IPIB’s decision, and the best possible outcome is a trip back to the IPIB.

The IPIB’s materials describe this complaint process as free and efficient. The Iowa attorney general’s “sunshine” guidance refers citizens with complaints to the IPIB.

BUT NOTHING HIGHLIGHTS how the free and efficient forum can turn out to be a costly choice — as Van Pelt’s case illustrates.

Despite his Court of Appeals victory, his reward, now 1,045 days after he first made his request to West Des Moines, is a line item on an IPIB meeting agenda, filed under matters to be accepted but with the word “Dismiss” still hanging out there to taunt him.

That’s a lovely parting gift unlike any Don Pardo ever gave away.

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Your “Sunday newspaper,” 2026 version

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work using the link below. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

The Iowa Supreme Court typically opens its rulings on the state’s public-records and open-meetings laws by reciting that the cases start with a “presumption of openness.”

But a new study of the court’s open-government decisions finds the presumption now wins only about half the time. That is a marked change from a decade ago, when the court’s decisions leaned decidedly toward public access and disclosure.

The Iowa Freedom of Information Council study examined 21 decisions involving Iowa Code chapters 21, 22 and 23 — the open-meetings, public-records and Iowa Public Information Board laws — that were decided between February 2011 and June 2026. The study examined how each of the 12 justices who sat on those cases voted.

The study was based on a review and analysis made with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence. Michael Giudicessi, legal counsel for the group, and I completed the review and editing that produced the new report.

The study’s central finding is a quiet flattening.

IN THE 2011-2018 ERA of the late Chief Justice Mark Cady, the mean direction of the court’s open-government holdings was +0.43 on a scale where +1 means every ruling favored access.

For the current court under Chief Justice Susan Christensen since 2021, that figure has fallen to 0.00 — with five rulings favoring access interests, five for confidentiality outcomes, and one neutral outcome across 11 decisions.

“The doctrine hasn’t changed; the arithmetic has,” the study concludes.

The court still recites the openness presumption, but the statutory exemptions, in the report’s words, “have grown teeth” — shielding driver-license data in one case, job-applicant privacy in another, and a closed-session hiring interview in a third.

THE SHIFT THE Iowa FOI Council found is generational rather than institutional.

Three of the newest justices — Christopher McDonald, Dana Oxley and David May — are the only members of the court with net records favoring confidentiality. They vote together most often. McDonald and May agreed in 100 percent of the open-government cases they both heard.

What has kept the court’s overall results near the center, the study found, is a wing of holdover justices, Edward Mansfield and Thomas Waterman, joined by Christensen and newcomer Matthew McDermott. Together, they supply the votes that decide the closest cases.

One popular assumption did not survive the data, the study found.

Some court-watchers have speculated McDonald and McDermott, both alumni of the Des Moines law firm Belin McCormick, would vote as a pair and perhaps be guided by Mansfield, the third former Belin lawyer now on the court.

Some even went so far to speculate that those three might carry the torch favoring access that was lit by Mark McCormick, a named partner in their old firm, who was a former Iowa Supreme Court justice. In 1979, McCormick wrote one of the most progressive pro-access, pro-media rulings in the Howard v. Des Moines Register & Tribune Co. case.

The decision involved a woman’s invasion-of-privacy action over the publication of her identity as part of an investigative report on involuntary sterilizations at the Jasper County Home. The newspaper asserted, and the court agreed, that the issue was one of substantial public interest and the private facts about her were in public records provided by the governor’s office.

Contrary to the speculation, or hope, McDonald and McDermott agreed just 78 percent of the time in the access cases reviewed — the lowest of McDonald’s pairings with other court members.

THE DIRECTIONAL TURN for the court in part traces to the 2012 decision in ACLU Foundation of Iowa v. Atlantic Community School District, a case centered on whether the public was entitled to disciplinary information about two school employees who conducted a controversial strip-search of five female students.

The Supreme Court decided confidentiality for the employees’ personnel files outweighed the public’s interest in accountability.

The decision was authored by David Wiggins, a Democratic appointee and former plaintiff’s lawyer. Waterman and Mansfield dissented in the Atlantic case, coming out for an access-friendly standard of review that did not prevail.

That change abandoned the practice of construing an exception to access and openness narrowly, at least when the language of a confidentiality exemption in the statutes is unambiguous. The decision led Cady to lament that the majority “takes a step backward from the new age of open government in this state.”

He was right. But it is unlikely he could have predicted the modification in approach started by Wiggins would gain disciples in McDonald, Oxley and May once they joined the court half a decade later.

Across the full 2011-2026 review period, the scoring range favoring access shows Wiggins, despite his 2012 Atlantic school ruling, and Brent Appel, each at net +6 on the access side, with McDonald and May at the opposite end of the range, at net −3.

Appel, writing for the court in 2012, put the traditional rule plainly: “Freedom of information acts establish a liberal policy in favor of access to public records.” Wiggins, dissenting in a 2020 driver-privacy case, would have ordered the records disclosed.

FOR THOSE SEEKING to vindicate access rights, the study suggests that openness outcomes remain attainable even though the current court seems more forgiving of government defendants and confidentiality proponents.

The justices who most often side with access tend to enforce the openness presumption and narrow application standard through the statute’s text — and enforce a clearly written exemption just as faithfully.

Nevertheless, recent access victories have turned on precise statutory readings: that confidentiality for a closed police investigation is not permanent, that unexplained delay in producing records is itself a denial, and that records from job applicants inside government are not shielded from public access.

THE IOWA FOI COUNCIL, a nonpartisan group that advocates for open government in Iowa, said the votes in the study were confirmed against the text of each Supreme Court opinion. Quotations in the study carry a citation to the official court reporter.

The study cautioned that 21 decisions over 15 years is too small for making definitive correlations. The study further noted that its coding measures only the direction of a holding — whether it favored or resulted in access or confidentiality — and does not judge why the justices voted as they did.

An appendix with the study sets out the full vote breakout for all 21 decisions — the direction of each holding and how every participating justice voted, case by case. So, any figure in the study can be traced back to the official court opinions.

The Iowa FOI Council’s full study is available at https://tinyurl.com/26mfyxt9.

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Your “Sunday newspaper,” 2026 version

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

NOVELIST CHARLES DICKENS poked his quill pen at government bureaucracy 175 years ago with his accounts about a fictionalized department he called the “Circumlocution Office.”

“Circumlocution” often is used with disdain to describe writing or speaking that is intentionally vague, evasive or overly wordy.

Sadly, the personnel departments in state and local governments in Iowa these days have become Circumlocution Offices of their own when officials describe why a highly paid public employee was fired.

The recent termination of a Polk County administrator illustrates the problem.

UNTIL A MONTH AGO, Tom Alessio Jr. was the deputy director of the Polk County general services division. The county compensated him handsomely, with a base salary of $155,000 per year. It also let him work a side gig as head football coach at Lincoln High School in Des Moines, for which the school paid him another $8,400.

On June 5, the county human resources director informed Alessio that he was fired on the spot. The director hand-delivered a letter to him that day in which she wrote, “This termination is the result of a workplace investigation which substantiated multiple allegations of inappropriate behaviors and conduct. All of these behaviors failed to meet the County’s reasonable expectations of conduct and leadership from someone in your position.”

The county has refused to elaborate beyond those statements. Taxpayers deservedly want to know what conduct led county officials in Des Moines to terminate such a highly compensated employee and to do so with such dispatch.

The Legislature anticipated exactly that question.

IN 2017, PRODDED by then-Governor Terry Branstad, the Legislature amended the public records law with House File 291 to require government employers to make public specific information about why an employee is terminated, demoted or resigns in lieu of termination.

The Legislature did not ask government to explain. It required government to do so.

The language in the 2017 law says employers like Polk County shall disclose the “documented reasons and rationale” for the dismissal of people like Tom Alessio.

The Iowa Public Information Board, a state agency that referees disputes involving Iowa’s open records and open meetings laws, issued an advisory opinion in 2018 that detailed how far government officials must go to satisfy the new law.

The board stated, “In order to meet the new requirement … government bodies must say which law, rule, or policy, if any, they believe the employee violated and provide at least one sentence about the behavior or incident that triggered the action. The explanation should include details, such as the date(s) of alleged behavior, location, and how it was discovered.”

In other words, a generic statement that an investigation substantiated multiple allegations of inappropriate behavior is insufficient under the requirements of the 2017 law and the IPIB’s 2018 guidance.

Facts, not generalities, are required.

THE AMENDED LANGUAGE Governor Branstad secured grew out of his belief that Iowa taxpayers deserved to know, as part of Iowa’s broad public policy in favor of openness and accountability, why state and local governments demote, fire or force the resignation of certain workers.

That is not a trivial matter.

The Legislature has made abundantly clear in recent years that lawmakers believe governments officials need to be better stewards of the ample tax resources provided by Iowans.

This is especially important with personnel matters because employment disputes often become expensive for taxpayers. Transparency promotes accountability before these fights turn into prolonged litigation.

Polk County appears ripe for some accountability.

Alessio’s boss, general services director Scott Ourth, a former state representative, is a defendant in two workplace sexual harassment lawsuits filed by female Polk County employees. Ourth is accused of engaging in unwanted hugging and touching and making inappropriate comments to women working for him.

Although Alessio is gone, Ourth is still on the job.

GOVERNOR BRANSTAD and the Legislature decided nearly a decade ago that taxpayers deserve more than vague assurances and cryptic details when government fires a public employee.

They deserve documented reasons. That remains the law today. And Polk County does not get to decide whether that law is convenient. It has a duty to obey the law.

This isn’t about Tom Alessio. Nor is it about Scott Ourth, who, when he was in the Legislature, voted against the 2017 legislation being discussed here. This isn’t even primarily about Polk County.

Instead, this is about whether governments in Iowa will comply with a transparency law the Legislature intentionally strengthened so taxpayers could expect and would receive meaningful explanations — not vague statements — when public employees are fired.

Considering that plain statutory command, it makes you wonder why in the dickens we continue to tolerate circumlocution experts like those in Polk County.

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A modern “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

When District Judge Adria Kester studied at the Drake University Law School, she must have opted out of the “Law of Holes” coursework.

I have written before about the first Law of Holes, in connection with Davenport city officials and their penchant for hiding facts from taxpayers. The Law of Holes is common-sense advice that says when you are in a hole and want to get out, the best thing to do is put down the shovel and stop digging.

Judge Kester found herself in a hole — actually, a Boone County highway ditch — on the night of November 4, 2025. She ended up there in her GMC Canyon Denali after an evening of drinking too much.

The wine cooler sheriff’s deputies found inside the travel tumbler in the center console held only told part of the story.

IT WAS ON November 4, 2025, that the Iowa Supreme Court took its “Court on the Road” program to Jefferson to hear oral arguments at Greene County High School. The county is one of 22 in the Second Judicial District, where Kester was the chief judge.

Kester reportedly attended some but not all events surrounding the Jefferson visit by the seven Supreme Court justices. Less than an hour after they concluded the court session and a juice-and-cookie reception hosted by the Greene County Bar Association, Kester held her own “court on the road” event as she headed home to adjoining Boone County.

Motorists alerted the Boone County sheriff that a vehicle was traveling slowly eastbound in the westbound lanes of U.S. Highway 30. The driver appeared slumped over the steering wheel. When deputies arrived, the vehicle was in the median and Kester was inside.

Deputies quickly realized this woman who could barely stand unassisted was a local judge. She was taken to the Boone hospital to test her blood for alcohol. She then was booked at the jail for first-offense drunken driving.

A month later, Kester pleaded guilty. She was fined $625 and received a suspended one-year jail sentence. She also was ordered to complete a drunken-driver offender course.

WHILE THAT CHAPTER of the saga ended, Kester soon learned firsthand about the Law of Holes, the part about needing to stop digging if you are in a hole.

When journalists requested public access to Boone County sheriff’s body camera video and other arrest information, Kester sued the sheriff seeking to prevent him from releasing the records. Her civil lawsuit also named the Boone County clerk of court and asked for an order keeping the filings in her public-records lawsuit sealed.

Kester claimed this secrecy was needed because no “government accountability gap” existed. She said she would have to relive the “trauma” of her arrest if access were granted.

Soon after she sued the sheriff and court clerk, I wrote commentary about the incongruity of her request for preferential treatment that few other criminal defendants receive. I discussed the important roles played by public records and court access laws in keeping government officials like Kester accountable.

About the same time, a Polk County judge ruled Kester’s request to seal judicial records was unsupportable given Iowa’s history of open courts.

LAST WEEK, as her case moved toward a court hearing on August 6, she dropped her lawsuit. Kester put down her shovel and stopped digging.

After ending her lawsuit, the body camera video of her arrest became public. That has opened the door for Kester to move on to second and third parts of the Law of Holes, which are:

• “Even when you stop digging, you are still in a hole,” and

• “The only way out of a hole is to climb.”

The second law certainly applies to Kester. She finds herself in a hole professionally. Since her arrest, she has been on paid administrative leave and continues to receive her annual salary of $172,000.

But the State Judicial Qualifications Commission is investigating her actions. Ultimately, the commission will make a recommendation to the Supreme Court, and the same seven justices who were in Jefferson on the night of November 4 will have the final say on her future as a judge.

Perhaps realizing that doing nothing would not help her cause, Kester has started the climb. Along with dropping her lawsuit, she issued a thoughtful statement in which she shared her embarrassment and anguish and apologized.

Kester wrote:

“I understand that wearing a judicial robe means more than applying the law correctly — it means earning the public’s trust every day. My actions that night fell short of that responsibility, and I am deeply sorry to the people I served, to my colleagues, and to everyone who expected better judgment from someone entrusted with that office.

“Public trust matters, and accountability matters, especially for judges.”

Kester also reflected on what she learned from the experience and on people who face similarly life-altering mistakes.

“Throughout my career, I worked with people who believed the worst thing they had ever done would define the rest of their lives. I often ended those hearings with the same message: This is one chapter in your book. It is not the end of your story. Turn the page. Start a new one.”

Months after her arrest, Kester said someone she knew reached out with a question that changed her thinking.

“They asked me a question I wasn’t expecting. ‘Why aren’t you practicing what you preached?’ And I realized that person was absolutely right. … Admitting that I needed help was one of the hardest — and most important — lessons.

“I cannot rewrite the chapter that brought me here. I am turning the page and starting a new one.”

WHILE KESTER’S STATEMENT would have been more powerful had she issued it when she pleaded guilty, it is a start. Kester dug a mighty deep hole in front of two important audiences.

First, the Supreme Court justices will have to decide whether Kester can keep her job. Second, the communities she serves and the taxpayers still paying her salary will have to decide if she remains worthy of the public trust.

And that may present the harshest reality of the Law of Holes: When you dig too deep, the climb back is long and steep.

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A modern “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a wide range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

Whether you work for the federal, state or local government, you best just accept that blame and criticism go with the job and move ahead.

Decatur County Attorney Alan Wilson learned that lesson a few years ago.

So, too, did Michael Hansen, the Newton mayor at the time.

It is a lesson top officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will have to learn for themselves.

These learning opportunities are grounded in an important principle — that all people in the United States are free to criticize government officials without fear of punishment or retribution.

THE REMINDER COMES five months after a Rochester, N.Y., man, David Streever, wrote to the head of ICE during its January crackdown in Minnesota that led to the deaths of two protesters who were shot by ICE agents.

Streever did not sugar-coat his opinions about ICE or Todd Lyons, ICE’s top administrator at the time.

“You are a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher,” Streever said in an email to Lyons, making a reference to the Nazi war criminal. “The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall.”

Penning an angry note to political leaders is an American tradition that goes back to quills and scrolls. Streever might be guilty of rude, exaggerated commentary, but his comments are protected by the First Amendment’s free speech right and by people’s right to seek a redress of grievances against their government.

Lyons did not see Streever’s criticism in a patriotic light, however.

LAST MONTH, two federal agents knocked on Streever’s door to deliver a “WARNING NOTICE” that informed him he may be violating federal law with his email. “This notice officially informs you that it is unlawful to threaten to assault, kidnap, and/or murder a federal official or that federal official’s immediate family member with the intent to impede, intimidate, and/or interfere with the federal official’s duties or retaliate against a federal official due to the performance of their duties,” the notice read.

The notice insisted he needed to discontinue his behavior and warned that further action might be taken if he continues with his “criminal activities.”

Every person in the United States, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, should be concerned at the actions by the ICE agents’ actions in Rochester and days later when they showed up at a New York City hotel where Streever and his daughter were staying. The agents warned him again he could face criminal prosecution for his comments.

The issue is not whether Streever’s language was civil or tasteful. It wasn’t. But that does not mean the federal government can threaten criminal prosecution simply to discourage criticism of public officials.

To allow otherwise forgets our roots, and our rights.

OUR COUNTRY’S FOUNDERS lived under the rule of the British king, when criticism constituted disloyalty. To eliminate that rule of unyielding fealty, the founders added 10 amendments to the new Constitution. Those amendments became our Bill of Rights.

The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights — with its five fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, the press, and the right of people to petition their government for “a redress of grievances” — cast away the vestiges of government-mandated fidelity to the king and to the rulers.

The last of those five freedoms, guaranteeing the right to petition for a redress of grievances, gave everyone with the right to complain about their government and to seek change, even if the messaging about the grievance was overly passionate or unduly rude.

Thankfully, our courts have not shied from enforcing those rights, even when the underlying message was crass and careless.

The Supreme Court upheld the right of Robert Watts, a young opponent of the Vietnam War and military draft, to declare at a public rally, “The first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.” — a reference to President Lyndon Johnson. The justices threw out his conviction because they concluded his statement was not a true threat against the president.

The court held five years earlier, in the New York Times v. Sullivan case, that public officials must expect “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks” as part of our democratic government.

And in a 1982 case arising from civil rights protests in Mississippi, the court found that impassioned political advocacy is protected by the Constitution unless it crosses the line to become true threats or violent conduct.

NO ONE DISPUTES that government may investigate and act on credible threats of injury made against government officials. But that is not what David Streever uttered in his email.

Last week, his attorneys sued the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, accusing them of violating Streever’s constitutional rights as they tried to use the power of government to silence his criticism.

Sadly, this is a story that has happened closer to home, too, as mentioned earlier with the references to Decatur County and the City of Newton.

You may recall the case of Rita Audlehelm, the Decatur County retiree, who wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper criticizing the months-long absence of a county supervisor.

Or the case of Noah Petersen, who called the mayor and Newton police chief “fascists” during a city council meeting.

In each instance a public official in a position of power sought to silence these critics though retaliatory actions by threatening litigation or prosecution.

But those Iowa government officials backed off once attorneys for Audlehelm and Petersen delivered stern reminders that criticizing government is a right, not an act that officials can punish or enjoin.

In Iowa, as in New York, the Constitution requires that government officials must tolerate speech even if they regard it as unfair, insulting or outrageous.

That is not a flaw in our Constitution. That is a strength.

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Your modern “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

Buried words, like buried treasures, sometimes surprise and enrich. But buried landmines only create problems now, and later.

Such is the case with a passage buried in a 71-page Iowa Supreme Court decision last month.

In a unanimous ruling, the court decided that a law authorizing Iowa prisons to block inmates from receiving printed materials containing nudity was constitutional.

The justices laid out a cogent rationale for their conclusion: Some inmate free-speech rights must give way inside prisons to protect safety and security. One such permissible restriction, the court said, allows government in Iowa to ban inmate access to commercially printed materials depicting nudity.

But the discussion did not stop with that.

A TROUBLING LEGAL THEORY

Buried within Justice Christopher McDonald’s separate concurrence is an idea that should concern every Iowan — not because it deals with prison censorship, but because it advances a legal theory that reaches far beyond prison walls.

McDonald agreed with the court’s majority in the lawsuit brought by nine inmates wanting access to magazines with nude images. But he rejected his fellow justices’ legal reasoning.

The court’s error, McDonald urged, came in holding that inmates, or any Iowan for that matter, has a right to receive information under the state constitution.

The inmates’ claim fails for two reasons, McDonald asserted. First, the Iowa Constitution contains no language expressly protecting a right to receive information. Even if it did, he continued, materials depicting nudity were historically prohibited in the state when the constitution was adopted in 1857.

JUSTICE’S VIEW AFFECTS BARE FACTS, TOO

If the Supreme Court followed McDonald’s approach, no one — not just those in prison — could claim a right to stay informed or to obtain facts and data without government interference. In McDonald’s view, Iowans would have no right to listen, no right to hear, no right to read, no right to receive, regardless of whether it involves nudity or just bare facts.

He argued, “The text of the state constitution does not support the conclusion that there is a state constitutional right to receive information. The constitution protects the right to ‘speak, write, and publish sentiments on all subjects.’

“These are all active, expressive verbs. They protect the right of the individual to express or communicate one’s own sentiments. None of these verbs encompasses, by its ordinary meaning, a passive right to receive or possess materials created by others.”

McDonald went on: “It might be urged that the right to publish is inherently relational and thus implies an audience with a correlative right to receive, but Article I, Section 7 [of the Iowa Constitution] protects the act of publishing, not the act of receiving.”

OTHER JUSTICES DISAGREE

That even one justice of the Iowa Supreme Court would advance this view is troubling.

His opinion received pushback from other justices. Writing for the court’s majority, Justice Dana Oxley dismissed his analysis:

“Justice McDonald’s opinion concurring in the judgment would have us hold that … apparently no Iowa citizen has the constitutional right to receive information of any type, period. The liberty of the press would mean little if it merely protected the right to publish but not the right to distribute or receive that which is published.

“Freedom of speech is not merely freedom to speak; it is also freedom to read. Forbid a person to read and you shut him out of the marketplace of ideas and opinions that it is the purpose of the free-speech clause to protect,” the Oxley majority continued.

“It is well established that the right to hear — the right to receive information — is no less protected by the First Amendment than the right to speak. Indeed, the right to hear and the right to speak are flip sides of the same coin.”

TESTING McDONALD’S LEGAL ANALYSIS

One way to test Justice McDonald’s analysis of the Iowa Constitution is to apply his legal rationale to other questions having nothing to do with publications containing nudity.

Consider, for example, voting rights.

What value is the right to vote if there is no right to have your ballot counted? The Iowa Constitution is silent on the right to have your ballot received and tallied.

Then there is Iowans’ right to keep and bear arms.

Following McDonald’s reasoning, gun-owning Iowans would lack a right to fire those weapons. After all, the words “discharge,” “fire” or “shoot” appear nowhere in the text of the constitution.

THERE ARE IMPLIED RIGHTS, TOO

But constitutional rights cannot be reduced to isolated verbs divorced from context.

As Justice Oxley and court’s majority recognized, the right to publish necessarily implies a right to receive what is published. Strip constitutional language of those necessary implications, and the rights themselves become little more than empty promises.

Iowans have known that since 1857, despite their state constitution lacking a laundry list of verbs.

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Your modern-day “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a range of topics of interest to folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s twice-a-week rundown.

During decades as a journalist, I had countless conversations with interesting people — future presidents, wannabe leaders, governors, business executives, religious thinkers, crooks, and ordinary folks who made a difference in their own corner of the world.

With soldiers headed to our cities and chaos in our nation, now is a good time to remember one difference-maker.

My memories of Wade Meloan remain sharp almost 50 years after I met the retired druggist in the Mississippi River town of Oquawka, Ill., just upriver from Burlington.

On my first trip to Oquawka, I quickly learned it was no secret Wade had a much younger girlfriend. She was 30. Wade was 65. Her name was Norma Jean.

Wade and Norma Jean did not spend a lot of time together. Fate has a way like that. You see, Norma Jean was a showgirl. She traveled and performed for people’s enjoyment, especially children.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Norma Jean was not grooming kids. She just made them laugh.

Wade’s wife, Mary, was quite understanding about his affection for Norma Jean. Mary was a delightful person and was charmed by her husband’s feelings for this other woman.

Let me be blunt here. Norma Jean, as we might say in polite company, was big-boned. She had leathery skin, and you could not help but notice her long nose.

Sadly, by the time I first met Wade, Norma Jean was gone. She died a tragic death four years earlier. But Wade simply could not put her out of his mind. She had stolen his heart.

THE STAR OF THE SHOW

Norma Jean was a star of the Clark and Walters Circus, which had come to Oquawka to perform in the city park in 1972. It was a small circus — a one-elephant circus, in fact. And Norma Jean was its premier pachyderm.

Several hours before the show was to go on that summer day, Norma Jean was chained under a tree in the park when a storm moved overhead. Lightning struck the tree and snuffed out her life in a flash.

The circus packed up and left town — leaving Norma Jean, all 6,500 pounds of her, on her side under the tree. It fell to the folks of Oquawka figure out how to dispose of the headline attraction. They brought in a backhoe to dig a 12-foot-deep grave, right there in the park. They rolled Norma Jean into the grave and filled the hole.

LIFE MUST GO ON

Everyone moved on with their lives — everyone except Wade Meloan.

A month or so later, Wade drove past the burial plot and was troubled that nothing had been done there. So, he planted grass. He placed a small plywood marker on the grave and erected a little picket fence around the plot. Each Memorial Day, he gathered unsold wreaths at the local grocery store and placed them on Norma Jean’s grave.

But Wade thought the old girl — that’s what he called her, “the old girl” — deserved to have a nicer marker. He told me, “When Norma Jean got it, that was the end of the show for the circus. The guy lost his business. But it was tough on the elephant, too.”

Wade thought a circus star needed a proper grave marker, and one larger than life, just like she was. He talked up his idea around town. It took four years of coaxing, but people recognized Wade was right. They knew his heart was as big as Norma Jean’s.

He raised about $800 for a proper tombstone, and on the eve of Memorial Day in 1977, five years after Norma Jean’s demise, the new tombstone was ready. It was impressive — 8 feet tall, 12 feet wide, handmade from slabs of fieldstone, with a granite insert with Norma Jean’s birthday and date of death, and a display case recounting her career.

A TOUCHING TRIBUTE

The dedication ceremony attracted tens of people. Wade even arranged for another elephant to attend. During the ceremony, this visitor named Okha carried a large wreath of daisies with her trunk and gently placed it on Norma Jean’s grave. Okha then propped her front feet up on the stone monument and trumpeted loudly.

It was a touching tribute, except for the business card Okha left on Norma Jean’s grave.

Wade summed up that wonderful day: “Everyone was so darn nice. It gives you a warm feeling in this cold world. I think we did her proud.”

There is something else about Norma Jean’s life and legacy, due in no small part to this guy you did not know. A website called Find a Grave catalogs thousands of graves across the United States. If you click through to cemeteries in Oquawka, Illinois, you can find a photo of the tombstone for Wade and Mary Meloan, with a little elephant carved in the corner. There is something else on Find a Grave for Oquawka — a listing for “Norma Jean Elephant Burial Site.”

REMEMBERING WADE’S WORDS

I have returned to Oquawka through the years. I find the community refreshing. It reminds me of the town where I grew up. It reminds me people are basically good. It reminds me we are all here on this earth, as they would say in show business, for a limited engagement.

So, we should remember Wade Meloan and his advice: Make the best of every day you have.

As he told me many years ago, “If you can’t go through life helping people — even if it’s an old dead elephant — then there’s no use being here.”

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Your modern-day “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a range of topics of interest of folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s two-a-week rundown.

The Fourth of July is a time to reflect and celebrate. To that end, here is my column from October 18, 2018, that I think is worthy of a second reading. See what you think.

Details are tucked away in the distant crevasses of my memory about one of life’s teachable moments. That lesson has stuck with me for nearly 60 years.

I wish I had that teachable moment on video so I could replay it for people today. It might help with all of the angst we are going through now over the issue of our flag and the National Anthem.

Things were much simpler back in the 1950s. World War II was still a fresh memory for our parents, having ended only a decade in the past. Maybe that was why adults back then were focused on seeing our similarities, rather than our differences.

I was a grade school kid then. We stood each morning and faced the flag at the front of our classroom and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

We had done this for as long as I could remember. But one day, I recall our teacher telling us a new student would be joining our class, and there was something she wanted us to know.

THE TEACHER’S little talk went something like this:

Boys and girls, there will be a new student joining our class tomorrow. When we stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance, she won’t be standing with us.

But this is OK. She is a member of a religion that doesn’t believe in saluting the flag and saying the Pledge.

I want you to welcome her into our class. I don’t want you to ever make fun of her for not standing with us.

And we never did.

Today, we would call our behavior after the teacher’s talk “Iowa nice.” But there was more involved, I learned later.

In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that students who were members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (like my new friend a dozen or so years later) could not be compelled to stand and salute the flag.

The court’s ruling was not popular in those war years, of course. But Justice Robert Jackson wrote, “Freedom to disagree is not limited to things that do not matter much.”

THE WASHINGTON POST editorial board recently wrote that the American principle of freedom of speech means real patriotism is not an enforced conformity but is an embrace of our differences — whether that’s in the classrooms of our public schools, on the football fields of the National Football League or Iowa high schools, or anywhere else across the United States.

Bloomfield Elementary School in the 1950s and 1960s was a world removed from schools of 2017, at least schools in some parts of our nation.

Consider the case of India Landry, 17, who attends high school in Houston, Texas. She had been staying seated during the Pledge of Allegiance because of her concerns about the treatment of black Americans, especially by the legal system.

But two weeks ago, as the president was expressing his strong views about NFL football players who do not stand for the National Anthem, India Landry’s school principal told her she would have to stand for the Pledge or she would be kicked out of school.

India remained seated, and she was expelled. Public pressure (and a conversation with the school district’s lawyer, I’m sure) led the administrator to a change of heart. India was allowed back in the classroom — and once again is being allowed to sit during the Pledge, in accordance with her wishes.

AS A PRODUCT of the 1950s and the son of World War II parents, I always stand for the Pledge and the National Anthem. But I would never tell someone they are not allowed to kneel or remain seated.

While I was raised to stand and show respect during the Pledge and the Anthem, I am also a strong believer in the First Amendment and people’s right to express themselves in ways that are different from mine. I can be both, because Dad and hundreds of thousands of other GIs served in World War II to protect our freedoms from the dictators of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

About 10 years ago, I was at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., for a conference at the U.S. Army War College. Some members of the military I got to know that week had served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Others were headed there when our conference ended.

One afternoon, we climbed on a bus for a reception at the post commander’s residence. On the way, a bugle call began in the distance. It was 5 p.m. Our driver quickly pulled over and stopped. Our military escorts got out and saluted. The rest of us, all civilians, hopped out and stood at attention.

Next to the road, a bunch of teenagers stopped their soccer game and stood quietly at attention, too.

The bugle call was Retreat, which sounds on U.S. military installations worldwide at the end of each work day.

THE WONDERFUL THING about the United States is that no one can require you to stand, whether you are on the second-oldest Army post in the U.S., are ready to begin a football game, or are a student in the public schools.

That’s as it should be.

Dad and countless other men and women from Davis County left home for several important years in the 1940s — and some came home in caskets — to ensure we have that freedom to choose what we want to do.

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Your modern-day “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a range of topics of interest of folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s two-a-week rundown.

The Fourth of July is a time to reflect and celebrate. To that end, here is my column from December 19, 2018. I think is is worthy of being read and savored again. The friendship at the center of this column was something special.

Americans these days seem to get along like dogs and cats.

We don’t trust each other. We constantly snipe back and forth. This person is a crook. That person is dumber than a box of rocks.

This acrimony and animosity have not provided a very fitting backdrop for the tranquility that is supposed to accompany the Christmas season.

Over the weekend, however, there was a touching reminder about our shared humanity and how we ought to look at our similarities, rather than our differences.

This message came from a most unlikely source — a cat litter scientist from Iowa and a legendary basketball player with an oversized personality.

The start came quite by happenstance.

IN 2014, Lin Wang, a native of China and leader of research and development for Kent Corp., a diversified Muscatine manufacturer, was in Sacramento, Calif., on a business trip. He was walking through the lobby of the hotel where he was staying when he noticed National Basketball Association hall-of-famer Charles Barkley across the way.

Shirley Wang, Lin Wang’s daughter, related to listeners on WBUR, the National Public Radio station in Boston, on Saturday what happened next. She used audio clips from her conversations with the men to tell the story.

“So, I just went to say hi and take a picture with him,” Lin Wang says on the audio recording.

“It was, like, one of the most random things,” Barkley says, chuckling.

“I was just sitting at the bar,” he continues. “And me and your dad were the only two people in there. And we just sit down and started talking.”

“He’s a super nice guy,” Wang says.

Barkley picked up the story: “Before we know it, we looked at each other, like, ‘Yo, man, I’m hungry. Let’s go to dinner.’ It turned into a two-hour dinner. And then we actually went back to the bar and just sat there and talked for another couple of hours. And the rest is history.”

THE TWO SAW EACH OTHER in the bar the next night and the night after that.

Lin Wang told his daughter, “I told him I had a good time talking with him, hanging out with him. He said the same thing to me, and he left the phone number. He said, ‘Whenever you’re in Atlanta, New York City or Phoenix, check with me. If I’m in town, we’ll hang out and have a good time.’ ”

And they did.

They sent text messages. They had dinner together. They spent time on the set of Barkley’s cable TV show, “Inside the NBA.” They watched basketball games. They took pictures together.

Barkley told Shirley Wang, “Your dad is one of the happiest people I’ve ever met in my life. I’m not just saying that. It’s fun to be with your friends, you know? ‘Cause, I don’t have that many friends that I want to be around, to be honest with you. I mean, you know a lot of people. But when you go spend time with your friends, it’s a whole different animal.”

IN JUNE 2015, Barkley’s mother died. When Lin Wang heard the news, he flew to Leeds, Ala., to be there for his friend.

“For your dad to take the time to come to the funeral meant a great deal to me,” Barkley told Shirley Wang.

Eleven months later, Lin Wang was diagnosed with cancerous tumors in his heart. But he didn’t tell Barkley he was sick.

“I called him and got mad at him when I found out,” Barkley told Shirley Wang. “I was, like, Dude, we’re friends. You can tell me. You’re not bothering me. You know me well enough — if you were bothering me, I would tell you you were bothering me.”

Lin Wang, 53, died last June 3 during the NBA Finals. The funeral was the day after his favorite team, the Golden State Warriors, won the title.

MOURNERS GATHERED for the visitation and the memorial service. Family and friends were astonished when they saw Charles Barkley, the NBA legend, sports TV star and larger-than-life celebrity, striding down the aisle of the Gay and Ciha Funeral Home in Iowa City.

Later, Shirley Wang, 22, asked her father’s buddy what they talked about during their hours of conversation. “Your dad was so proud of you and your brother. Listen: As an adult — and you’re too young to understand this now — all you want is your kids to be happy. That’s what you work for. To give your kids everything in life.

“It gives me great memories and great joy to know that I was a friend of his,” Barkley said. “Just hearing about him at the funeral — what he had accomplished and what he was trying to help other people accomplish — I was blessed to know him.”

THE TAKEAWAY from all of this is really pretty simple:

If a Chinese-born chemist who came to America with $60 in his pocket in the 1990s, became a prototypical suburban dad and achieved fame in the world of kitty litter, and a Black basketball player from a broken home in Alabama who achieved success in basketball and television can find a common connection, what’s stopping the rest of us from doing a better job of getting along with each other?

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Your modern “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a range of topics of interest of folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s two-a-week rundown.

The Fourth of July is a time to reflect and celebrate. To that end, here is my column from July 17, 2019. I think is worth reading again. I hope you enjoy this Iowa history lesson.

This is a good week for Iowans to put away forever what a newspaper friend once called our “mental overalls.”

The label was his way of describing the tendency of Iowans to downplay the state’s importance in anything other than dirt-under-your-fingernails agriculture.

Being a farmer certainly is nothing to be ashamed of. But my friend thought Iowans were programmed to automatically sit quietly and say nothing when contributions to the arts, or the sciences, or to business, medicine or humanity were being discussed nationally.

In my friend’s thinking, Iowans spend too much time putting ourselves down and too little time applauding our achievements.

There’s no question about Iowa’s expertise in agriculture and ag research. But there is no basis for Iowans to look down upon our contributions in other areas of life.

This week — the 50th anniversary of the first humans landing on the moon — is an excellent time to remember that Iowans have played important roles outside of agriculture, too.

During those eight days in July 1969, Iowans joined millions of people around the globe to watch the television coverage of Apollo 11 — from the anxiety-filled launch on July 16, to Eagle’s harrowing landing on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility at 3:17 p.m. on July 20.

From start to finish, Iowans played key, though unheralded, roles in getting Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins to the moon and back.

CONSIDER:

Radio equipment that enabled flight controllers at Mission Control in Houston to speak with the astronauts on the moon’s surface was designed and built in Cedar Rapids by Collins Radio Co.

Beginning with the Mercury and Gemini space flights and continuing through every Apollo mission, all voice communication, television footage and flight data was transmitted from space using Collins Radio equipment — from the gear aboard the spacecraft, to the gear in Houston and at Cape Canaveral, Fla., to the 14 tracking and communication ground stations built for NASA around the globe.

This all traces back to company founder Arthur Collins, one of the inventive geniuses in Iowa history — and someone who never wore mental overalls.

As a 16-year-old shortwave radio enthusiast, Collins communicated with a 1925 expedition to the Arctic from the attic of his family’s home in Cedar Rapids. Eight years later, when Adm. Richard Byrd was preparing for an expedition to the South Pole, Collins was hired to provide radios for the explorers — and the Collins Radio Co. was born.

During World War II, Collins Radio supplied the United States military with communications and navigation equipment for ground, ship and aircraft units.

THE APOLLO 11 ASTRONAUTS headed to the moon on a giant Saturn V rocket, the largest ever built, standing 363 feet tall and 33 feet wide. The rocket basically was a huge fuel tank to power the spacecraft to 25,000 mph to break free of the Earth’s gravity.

Not just any metal could withstand the tremendous heat and powerful forces the Saturn V was subjected to as it thundered off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, with fire boiling from its tail.

NASA scientists turned to the metallurgy experts at Alcoa and its huge production facility adjacent to the Mississippi River at Riverdale, Iowa, in the Quad Cities. There, Alcoa developed a new aluminum alloy that was both lightweight and able of withstanding super-high temperatures.

On that morning 50 years ago when Apollo 11 departed Earth for the moon, it was the work of Alcoa’s metallurgists and the men and women at the Riverdale plant who helped the rocket reach for the heavens.

BEFORE THERE WAS AN Apollo 11, before there was a Saturn V rocket, and before Neil Armstrong began thinking about “one small step for a man,” there was another Iowa man who played nearly an invisible role in landing the first humans on the moon.

John Houbolt was a NASA aerospace engineer who was born in Altoona, the son of immigrant farmers from the Netherlands.

There was intense debate among scientists over how best to get to the moon and back after President Kennedy laid out the goal for the United States to reach the moon during the 1960s. Some favored what was known as the “big blast,” with a rocket leaving the Earth, landing on the moon, and then blasting off to return home. Others favored putting a spacecraft into orbit around the Earth and then deploying a landing module for the voyage to the moon and the return to Earth orbit.

But Houbolt believed those approaches were much too complex, too expensive and too dangerous. He took his concerns straight to the top of NASA, knowing that he might jeopardize his career by speaking out.

Houbolt argued persuasively that the best approach would involve lunar orbit rendezvous — the mission format the United States ultimately adopted — with a rocket launching a command module into orbit around the moon, the deployment of a lunar lander carrying the astronauts, and then the lander blasting off from the moon’s surface to rejoin the command module for the trip home.

DURING A TELEVISION broadcast from Apollo 11 the night before they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, astronaut Michael Collins spoke to millions of people back on Earth: “All you see is the three of us, but beneath the surface are thousands and thousands of others, and to all of those, I would like to say, ‘Thank you very much.’ ”

Once and for all, Iowans should throw away our mental overalls. The moon landing showed we didn’t need them back then, and we certainly don’t need them now.

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Your modern-day “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a range of topics of interest of folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s two-a-week rundown.

The Fourth of July is a time to reflect and celebrate. To that end, here is my column from May 11, 2016. I think it is worth reading again. Or, for the first time if you missed it in 2016.

Evanses have been calling Davis County home for 185 years. The first of my ancestors arrived in 1840 — six years before Iowa became a state.

Although my brothers and I left after finishing college, there still is something that tugs at us and brings us back to these 500 square miles of rolling countryside.

There still is a connection that brings back memories of my parents, my grandparents and the cousins, aunts and uncles who were around when my brothers and I were growing up.

There is something uplifting about returning home — even when a death leads to the trip. In spite of the bittersweet circumstances, you come away reinvigorated after seeing the familiar hillsides and the stands of trees that spring transforms from dingy brown to vibrant green. It’s comforting to see the imposing courthouse again and the buildings on the Bloomfield square.

I WAS BACK in Davis County a week ago for the funeral of a cousin, Gary Foster, 72, who farmed his entire life near the town of Mark. Gary was married for 50 years to another cousin of mine, Sandy Evans.

The death of a relative is an important reminder as we move through life to savor the memories we have tucked away. The death also reminds us to appreciate the gentle souls who populate places like Davis County without calling attention to themselves or to the kindness and good deeds that are important parts of the way they live.

Gary would tell you that he was just a farmer. But that’s not accurate. He was not just a farmer.

While farming was the way he made a living, he was someone who cared about his neighbors, his friends and relatives. He cared about their children, even though he and Sandy never had any of their own. He always brought a smile to kids’ faces when he would reach into his pickup truck and pull out a candy bar for them.

Society has become so me-centered that people like Gary are to be treasured. Iowa farmers always inspire and amaze me with their willingness to lend a hand to others. You see that when a neighbor needs to borrow a tractor while his is being repaired. You see that when farmers go together to harvest a neighbor’s crops or plant his fields when sickness or injury sidelines him.

That was Gary. But his neighborliness also took another form, an especially tasty form.

Each year, he grew dozens of tomato plants. He was as generous with his tomato-growing secrets as he was with sacks filled with the fruit of his vines.

FARMERS NEED a healthy sense of humor to cope with the constantly changing weather patterns and the fluctuating prices that affect their livelihoods. And Gary’s humor was strong — and a bit mischievous.

Referring to that big-city cousin who is a newspaper columnist, he asked Sandy a few months ago, “Whatever possessed him to write that?”

And there was the time Sandy overheard him talking to himself and asked, “Who are you talking to?”

“God,” Gary replied. “He’s the only one who will listen to me.”

YOU CAN’T HELP but draw strength from memories like those and from remembering the countless trips from Bloomfield, through Mark and on to our grandparents in Monterey.

It was on those trips during our teen years that Dad taught my brothers and me to drive. There were frequent conversations about ancestors and family history as we walked through rural cemeteries to put American flags on graves of veterans. And there were countless stories about his years growing up around Monterey.

Since 1852, Hopkins Cemetery has been a final resting place for farmers like Gary Foster. Generations of families are buried there who devoted their lives to tilling the soil and raising crops and livestock — and tomatoes, too — to feed people far and wide.

But time marches on. Another growing season is upon us. There are new crops and new calves, piglets and lambs for Davis County farmers to raise.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to check on their progress. I’ll visit the graves of my parents and other relatives and friends. I’ll stop to check on Gary, too.

I won’t put flowers on his grave. But I will leave a tomato plant for him.

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Your modern-day “Sunday newspaper”

Stray Thoughts is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, a group of Iowa and former Iowa writers who post news articles, feature stories, sports stories and commentary about a range of topics of interest of folks from Ackley to Zwingle. Check out their work. It costs you nothing, although paid subscriptions are appreciated. Here’s the link to the Collaborative’s two-a-week rundown.