Iowa House panel pares open meetings legislation
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By Dan Gearino | Thursday, April 17, 2008 |
DES MOINES — A proposed rewrite of state sunshine laws may be too hot for the Iowa House to handle.
A House committee voted late Tuesday to delete all but one provision of the bill, a move that caught Senate sponsors off-guard.
“It’s not what I would call a profile in courage,” Sen. Mike Connolly, D-Dubuque, said Wednesday.
The bill, which deals with rules for openness in government, is a response to perceived shortcomings in current law. The measure would create a new agency, the Iowa Public Information Board, to enforce the new rules.
The House version removes all of the changes to existing law, while maintaining the creation of the new agency. In essence, the agency would be put in place to enforce the current law, rather than the revised law the Senate wants.
Rep. Vicki Lensing, D-Iowa City, who proposed the House amendment, said the 50-page bill needed to be downsized because it was too complicated to properly review before the Legislature adjourns. She faulted the Senate for taking too long to pass the bill, which gave the House almost no time.
“We were racing against the clock,” she said.
Rep. Roger Wendt, D-Sioux City, voted for the amendment and he agrees with Lensing’s rationale.
“There’s no way I could vote for that bill. There’s so much in there. We don’t have the time to dissect it,” he said.
Under the House version, the new agency would make recommendations for changes in the open records and open meetings laws, and the Legislature would consider those changes in future years.
The Senate version would have made several high-profile changes to the law, changes that have been removed. Among them:
n Subcontracts involving public boards and outside organizations would be available for public view. This is a response to the salary scandal involving the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium, or CIETC.
n Government boards would be banned from using so-called walking quorums. A walking quorum is an attempt to evade open-meetings rules by discussing public business in a series of conversations without a majority of board members present.
Dan Gearino can be contacted at (515) 243-0138 or dan.gearino@lee.net.
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