Recently, a lawsuit was filed in the Iowa Courts alleging that Governor Kim Reynolds had violated Open Records Law when she purposely disregarded formal requests to view her office’s public records between 4/2020 – 4/2021. In many cases, such a serious breach of law has led to removal of office.

However, in our Governor’s case, a convenient settlement was reached where she admitted no guilt and the attorneys fees of $135,000 were to be paid by the ‘state,’ meaning tax dollars from you and me. Something sounds really fishy there.

She and her party majority also quickly passed Senate File 478 establishing an ‘Arbitration Panel’ of three people to decide fairness of any state audits, this consisting of one person from the party involved, one at the Governor’s discretion, and our State Auditor.

Thus, two Republican members can repeatedly vote down the one Democrat, resulting in total control of future attempts to secure official papers from any state agencies for an audit. Under such an absurd new arrangement, this new panel can decide whether our elected State Auditor is actually justified to do an audit on any state office, which obviously greatly restricts him from the duties we pay him to do.

Gov. Reynolds’ increasing thirst for secrecy and power has become a serious threat to our democracy in Iowa.

Mary McBee

Tama