The intent of Iowa Public Radio to operate consistent with Iowa Public Records and Open Meetings Laws will be written into the organization’s operating agreement when that document is renewed in July, according to state officials. Some questions recently were raised about whether Iowa Public Radio is a government entity that is subject to Open [...]

A confirmation fight, the Steve King-O-meter moves five points and gun keeping your prying eyes from gun permits on this week’s podcast. This week’s show features The Gazette’s James Lynch, Andrew Wind, Quad City Times  Statehouse Bureau Chief Mike Wiser and Sioux City political reporter Bret Hayworth. The show was produced by Max Freund and [...]

  The weather may be warmer, but last week’s Sunshine Week came and went with a fraction of the attention paid to a single temperate day. Sunshine Week is a time to trumpet the importance of transparency in government. But this year, that trumpet was hard to hear. There were some highlights that I should [...]

An attorney for the national Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity was upset with the statement from University of Iowa officials regarding the closure of the fraternity’s UI chapter, believing the statement “disengages the university from any role in the closure.” Frank Ginocchio, general counsel and director of risk management for the national SAE office, made those [...]

  It was a spring tradition that a columnist could count on, or so I thought. About this time each year, for the last five years, I would pound out a column hammering the Iowa Legislature for failing to, yet again, create a panel, board, authority or agency to enforce open meetings and records laws. [...]

IOWA CITY – A taxpayer-funded organization created by the Iowa City Council will close its meetings to the public. The board governing the new downtown Iowa City self-supported municipal improvement district, or SSMID, said because it is a nonprofit organization, it is not subject Iowa’s open meetings law. “The majority of the board wanted to [...]

Four days before former University of Iowa running back Marcus Coker announced he was leaving the football team, UI officials had a statement prepared declaring that Coker was enrolled for the spring semester and academically eligible. That drafted statement, dated the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 6, was among the nine pages of emails and correspondence [...]

  So I was reading down the list of new appointees to state boards and commissions released by Gov. Terry Branstad today. And one thing that struck me was the number of commissions. I counted 28 different panels on the list. There’s an Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service and a Terrace Hill Commission. There’s an [...]

I meant to address this yesterday, but got bogged down in maps etc. The Register of Des Moines carried news Thursday that legislation creating a panel to help enforce open meetings and records laws in Iowa exempts the governor, judicial branch and Legislature. From the DMR: Lawmakers are considering creation of a new board to [...]