Davenport investigation may drag out
Davenport investigation may drag out
Plus, a new podcast and a reimbursement program for Congress, based on the honor-system.
Attempts to shine more light on the City of Davenport’s controversial decision last year to award its former city administrator $1.6 million may have gotten more difficult.
The Iowa Supreme Court has granted the city’s request to appeal a district court ruling that State Auditor Rob Sand is entitled to access to recordings of closed-door meetings of the city council prior to and after it struck a deal with Corri Spiegel just before the 2023 city election.
Spiegel had alleged years of harassment by elected officials, and the payment was kept under wraps until after voters went to the polls. Spiegel agreed to drop her claims in exchange for the payment and left her job at the city. (Two other former city employees who alleged harassment by elected officials also were paid about $300,000 between them.)
Sand announced in January that he would investigate the matter, and he subpoenaed several records, including the recordings.
In June, a Scott County district judge decided, over the city’s objections, that Sand should have access to the recordings. The judge also ordered that the recordings be turned over to the court for an “in camera” (or private) review so he could exclude irrelevant information and any attorney work product.
The city then went to the Supreme Court asking permission to file an interlocutory appeal. In its request, the city called the case a “direct assault” on its right to privileged communications with its attorneys.
The Supreme Court’s decision granting the city’s application was issued last Friday, and it included a stay on district court proceedings.
I worry that this appeal could significantly slow Sand’s inquiry. A spokesperson for the auditor’s office declined to comment.
I don’t know how long this appeal will take. But in 2019, when the state Supreme Court granted the City of Davenport’s application for an interlocutory appeal in a dispute that had to do with the mayor’s powers to appoint members of the city’s Civil Rights Commission, it took more than a year for the high court to issue a final decision.
The city has argued it isn’t fighting transparency efforts in the Spiegel matter, but the record says otherwise.
The city agreed to the deal behind closed doors, when it should have done so in public. (Only later, amid public pressure, did it ratify the agreements in open session.)
The city kept mum about the settlements until after the election.
The city didn’t even release details of the Spiegel deal until the day before the Thanksgiving holiday last year, when it knew few people would be paying attention.
The city also resisted the Iowa Freedom of Information Council’s request to participate in a court case involving whether a key document in the Spiegel settlement could be made public. Even as it did so, the city said it took no position in the matter. The court eventually decided the case in favor of openness.
I don’t discount the value of maintaining attorney/client privilege, but state law, while granting Sand access to confidential records, clearly prohibits him from sharing those records with the public.
The district court’s order for an in-camera review also appears to be an added step to protect the city from harm.
Sand’s investigation is an important step in shining a light on the council’s actions in agreeing to pay nearly $2 million in taxpayer dollars to these three former city employees. By standing in the way of oversight, the city and its elected officials belie their claim that they are being transparent with the public.
Listen to our podcast!
This week’s Iowa Down Ballot podcast covered a lot of ground, and I think it’s definitely worth a listen.
The podcast is a production of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, and through Election Day, we will be offering our take on political developments, state and national, on a weekly basis.
This week, I took part in the podcast, along with host Kathie Obradovich, as well as Laura Belin, Dave Price and Barry Piatt.
We talked about the 1st and 3rd District congressional races, including a debate in the 3rd; the politics of hurricanes—and the misinformation about FEMA’s recovery efforts that’s being spread by Iowa Republicans.
We also talked about complaints by some in the national news media about Kamala Harris granting interviews to non-traditional media outlets. (She also did an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes.”)
National media protests about presidential candidates favoring non-traditional or local media go back a long time. I remember back in 2007, in an interview with me, Hillary Clinton criticized Barack Obama for comments he’d made during a debate. It was the first time Clinton directly criticized Obama in the primary campaign, and the national media jumped all over the story. Obama responded to Clinton’s criticisms in a separate interview with me later in the day.
It was quite satisfying to see major newspapers crediting my newspaper with breaking the news. Then again, I remember one national television correspondent expressing bewilderment that Clinton would choose to take on Obama in an interview with the Quad-City Times. It was, he said, comparable to two major powers deciding to go to war over the Falkland Islands.
The public trough
The Washington Post has an interesting new report about how members of the US House of Representatives are being reimbursed with public funds for expenses under a program that doesn’t require they provide receipts.
The Post reports the program was created at the end of 2022 and allows lawmakers to get reimbursed for lodging, meals and other incidental costs while they’re in Washington, D.C., on official business.
For the first five months of this year, lawmakers expensed $2.5 million under the program, the newspaper said.
Both Democrats and Republicans claimed reimbursements, and three of the four lawmakers representing Iowa, all Republicans, did so, according to the Post database: Mariannette Miller-Meeks expensed $4,258; Ashley Hinson, $9,050 and Zach Nunn, $9,162.
The Post reports:
The program … was intended to help members offset the costs of maintaining two households without requiring them to give themselves a politically toxic raise.
But critics of the expense program have argued that its lack of receipt requirements and reliance on the honor system open it up for abuse, and expenses have risen for 2024 despite public scrutiny of last year’s spending. The data released by the House is sourced from expense information submitted by individual congressional offices, which can potentially contain errors or be corrected later. The data that The Post reviewed for this article is probably the last major data release before next month’s elections.
The newspaper reports that the data was released by the House on Oct. 9.
Iowa fights new nursing home rules
If you have the chance, I recommend you read the Iowa Capital Dispatch article about a legal challenge to new federal regulations aimed at forcing the nursing home industry to bolster staffing.
Here are the first couple of paragraphs of Clark Kauffman’s article:
The state of Iowa, where nursing homes have compiled one of the nation’s worst records for staffing-level violations, has joined 19 other states in suing the Biden administration to block the implementation of new staffing requirements.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, seeks to overturn the nursing home staffing requirements approved earlier this year by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
This is a major issue in Iowa, an older state, where staffing level violations are the sixth-worst in the nation, according to the Capital Dispatch.
Kauffman has been relentlessly chronicling the practices of the nursing home industry in Iowa, as well as its political clout.
All of these articles, as well as his other work on this subject, are well worth reading.
Along the Mississippi is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please check out the work of my colleagues and consider subscribing. Also, the collaborative partners with the Iowa Capital Dispatch, which provides hard-hitting news along with selected commentary by members of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider making a donation to support its work, too.
My parents lived in elder-care housing for five years. When I visited my parents I noticed they were under-staffed and paid poverty-level wages. Gov. Reynolds and the Iowa GOP have known this problem for many years. Their answer is--our hands are tied and we will not make the very wealthy Nursing home industry give the elderly TLC in their final years of living. We will pray for them.
Thank you, Ed, for not forgetting this important story.