We start off this week with a prediction nailed by Dave. The 2025 legislative session was scheduled to end on Friday. That didn’t happen (as predicted). Now where do we go from here. Pat Grassley is trying to distance himself a bit from the governor on these budget talks, and the house and senate are currently about $36 million apart and the budget needs to be done for the legislature to recess; Some house republicans may be using the budget standoff to force a senate vote on their carbon pipeline/eminent domain bill which senate republicans have been trying to avoid all session. Governor Reynolds’ pending retirement may also be playing a role in these negotiations; We have the latest on the Iowa Judicial Branch misallocating $27 million into the state general fund due to what they call ‘coding errors.’ Rob Sand was grilled on the issue at a House Oversight Committee meeting on Wednesday; We close out the show with the governor suing the Des Moines Register to protect the use of, in her words, ‘executive privilege.’ Thanks for watching/listening/reading and we’ll see ya next week!
Transcript below:
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Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Iowa Down Ballot podcast.
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This is a collaboration and a project of the Iowa Writers Collaborative,
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our group of about 70 or so writers from all over the place writing about all
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things Iowa and how things impact.
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people who live in the state of Iowa.
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We come to you every week.
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Right now we primarily focus on what is going on at the Iowa State House with the
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Iowa Legislature and as we record this on Friday,
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technically this is supposed to mark the unofficial end to the legislative session
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or at least the last day that lawmakers get the extra pay for travel and lodging
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and all that kind of stuff.
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but it looks like overtime is once again on the agenda.
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Let's bring in our regular contributors, Kathie Obradovich and Laura Bellin.
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Hello to both of you.
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I did.
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Happy Friday.
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You both know and knew that there was no way in heck this legislative session was
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going to be finished today,
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despite one party having supermajority control,
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because sometimes family members do not get along.
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And that appears to be the case of what we are witnessing.
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And I appreciate that for most people, this is all likely inside politics and
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stuff that doesn't generally impact their lives potentially,
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or at least it's hard to figure out how it's going to impact our lives.
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But let's get into this family drama first, shall we, Kathie?
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What do you make about,
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we have a couple of spats to get into,
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but let's first start with Governor Kim Reynolds,
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House Speaker Pat Grassley.
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What has happened here?
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Yeah, so I don't know what has caused this, but clearly they are not getting along.
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Just a little bit of background here.
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First of all, the legislature, when it comes right down to it, they have one job, one job.
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They have to pass a budget.
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And then anything else they do, you know, icing on the cake, all right?
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This is their one job.
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The House started passing their budget
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yesterday, right?
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So the day before they're supposed to adjourn for the year,
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they started passing budget bills out of their subcommittees.
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Earlier in the week, the Senate Republicans announced that they had a budget deal
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With the governor, no mention of the House.
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Yeah, and so the House obviously not on board with what the Senate wants.
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I had heard at one point that they were as much as $80 million apart.
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As it stands right now, they're about $36 million apart.
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And about a $9.5 billion budget.
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Yeah, nine and a half billion dollar budget.
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And about half of that 36 million is one budget item,
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a little less than half,
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one budget item,
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which we can get into.
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But so, yeah, I don't know what the beef is between Grassley and the governor.
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But Grassley and Jack Whitver,
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the Senate majority leader,
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also have not worked well together their whole time that they've both been leaders.
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The Senate and House,
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when they were the same party leadership,
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used to have press conferences together.
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Their chambers had joint appropriations committee meetings so that they could all
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be on the same page with the budget.
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They would typically release
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budget targets at the same time.
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And none of that has really happened since both Grassley and Whitford have been leaders.
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I don't know if it's rivalry that people assumed that,
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you know,
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Pat Grassley being the grandson of Senator Chuck Grassley was going to run for
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higher office and maybe Jack Whitford also wanted to run for higher office.
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Don't know.
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I just to break in on a parliamentary nerd note,
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these joint budget subcommittees,
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these have existed for something like 50 years in the legislature.
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And I've talked to legislators from both parties who said how helpful it was to
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have these joint meetings of House and Senate members working on the budget.
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They would start working early in the year.
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And even when it was divided control, it did help them.
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Of course,
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they still disagreed on how much to spend on different things,
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but they were more on the same page,
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I think,
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than they are now.
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I will say that trifectas,
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I've talked to people who were involved with the Democratic trifecta from 2007
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through 2010,
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and there is a general tendency over the lifetime of a trifecta for people to start
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getting along less well and for friction to develop.
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That certainly happened in 2009,
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2010,
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compared to the first two years of the Democratic trifecta,
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but it didn't manifest in this late session drama.
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In fact, in 2010, the legislators actually finished early.
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I think that's the only time
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I can never remember.
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They finished it before the scheduled adjournment date.
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Yeah, it was.
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So the best, best April I've ever had.
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Yes.
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But,
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you know,
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Jack Whitver,
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when he became Senate majority leader,
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it was very soon after that,
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that they blew up these joint budget subcommittee meetings ostensibly because of
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the COVID pandemic,
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but it really wasn't anything to do with social distancing or having fewer people
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in a room.
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And of course they never went back to that.
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And as Kathie mentioned,
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They never went back to having the press conferences that they used to have the
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House and Senate Republicans for many years.
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So it's kind of dysfunctional.
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And the Senate has been largely more aligned with the governor on almost all the issues.
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I mean, the Senate passed the school voucher bill.
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Bills in 2021,
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2022,
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the House,
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there was a standoff then because the House Republicans,
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there were too many who didn't want to publish it or didn't want to do that.
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On the AEA bill,
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what the Senate passed was much closer to the governor's original proposal for area
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education agencies,
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and it was really the demands of House Republicans.
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I think there's that alignment.
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But it is odd to me what's going on because $36 million difference in a budget of
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this size is not that significant.
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So you would think that they would have been able to work this out by now.
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uh parliamentary nerd note should be a new t-shirt at raygun so i believe you have
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just created the new sponsor for this podcast first of all i think i stole that
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from jamie jamie dupree who's a congressional reporter i follow and he often puts
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in his newsletter the parliamentary okay okay all right we better not we better not
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steal that then i just
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I was so surprised.
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I appreciate that you brought up and I was working with my TV colleague yesterday on his story.
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And I said,
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let's be a little careful how we phrase this in that to all of us,
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$36 million is a ton of money.
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So I never want to discount a chunk like that.
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Having said that,
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and I should just pull out my calculator here and see what the math is,
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but when you're talking $36 million out of $9.5 billion,
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it's a very small percentage.
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What struck me was that...
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why on monday the governor decided to put this out publicly like this is something
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you can all keep within the family and it doesn't need to go public like this and i
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asked her about this for a tv story um that i'm putting together that i haven't yet
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so i don't want to ruin the whole thing but i had asked her specifically about why
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go public with this or whatever and there wasn't really a specific answer as you
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can
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as you can figure on this.
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But this is clearly part of this sort of,
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she's showing this united front with Jack Whitver,
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Pat Grassley's on the other side,
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but the difference in the money is small enough that it,
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to me,
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just demonstrates how much this relationship is jacked up right now to put this out
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publicly instead of just working this out privately.
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Yeah,
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I mean,
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she's trying I think she's trying to pressure the House to,
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you know,
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come to the table if they're not at the table or,
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you know,
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to get off the dime on some of these issues and get the session over with.
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I mean, and, you know, it maybe it worked.
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They put out that that press release that they had a deal between, you know, a bilateral deal.
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And by that time, the House didn't even have their budget targets out.
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They did send them out, you know, within a day or two.
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So, you know, at least they made a show of progress.
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They've started budget subs.
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So maybe that helped to put some pressure on them to get to get moving,
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at least on some of these issues.
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Well,
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I mean,
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the Senate and the governor held firm on the school funding,
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which we talked about a few weeks ago,
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that they wanted 2%.
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The House Republicans wanted 2.25% plus some other money.
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And the final deal was much closer to what the Senate and the governor wanted to spend.
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So I think that that's why we're seeing this hardball now.
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But I thought what was even more extraordinary was
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than the governor putting that statement out there was yesterday at the House
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Speaker's gaggle with reporters,
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which he does most of the time on Thursdays,
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and someone asked him about this sticking point that Kathie alluded to,
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$14 million that is for increasing salaries for paraeducators.
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This is something that's very important to House Republicans.
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They wanted this last year as part of the big area education agency bill.
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And the governor had made some comment about not being supportive of that.
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And when asked about it,
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I'm now just going to read from Radio Iowa's report that Pat Grassley said,
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we're not going to go back and just cut that and leave our schools in a situation
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to find the difference.
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Those are more like Governor Culver practices that we saw,
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and we don't want to see that happening on something like that,
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end quote.
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So to invoke
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Governor Chet Culver in any kind of context when you're talking about budget negotiations,
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I felt like that was a significant escalation from the House Speaker.
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And clearly he was riled up with what the governor had said,
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essentially with the exact quote,
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essentially saying that the House was overspending.
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And Grassley also made a comment about no Grassley has ever been accused of,
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you know,
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having a loose wallet or however he phrased it.
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He said, you know, far to the contrary.
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So, I mean, it was obvious you had that tension.
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And with Grassley,
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as I listened to this and watched this all play out and talking to both of them yesterday,
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you know,
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same with you all,
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you talk to the House Republican caucus and they clearly they weren't thrilled with
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the final deal for school funding.
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So while the governor may be trying to publicly pressure them to show that she's on this,
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you know,
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she and Senate Republicans are together,
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why would Grassley,
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unless he loses the patience of a caucus,
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why are they going to give in on this,
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especially with the 14 million for the paras?
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Now, maybe they get that and that's,
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they sort of almost meet in the middle on the budget difference or something as
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long as they get the money for the paraeducators but you would assume wouldn't you
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that they're going to probably dig in on this knowing that the caucus feels like
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they kind of got the short end of school funding deal before
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I think there are other issues involved also.
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I mean, yeah, you're right.
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I mean,
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I think that any of these money issues,
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they can find a way around those,
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including this education funding issue.
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And I know this is on your list to bring up,
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but the pipeline bill,
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I think,
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is as important or maybe more important
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and driving some of these conflicts between the House, Senate and governor.
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You've got the House that created basically an omnibus bill dealing with the issues
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related to the pipeline.
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We've talked about this a lot already, but just to recap, the big issue is allowing this private
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project to essentially force landowners to give them an easement for a price set by
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a court,
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you know,
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rather than,
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you know,
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negotiating voluntary easements across,
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you know,
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thousands of miles of mostly farmland.
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OK,
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so so we've got a situation now where the House has tried several years to get some
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some guardrails,
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some restrictions on eminent domain.
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All of them have died in the Senate.
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This year is likely to be no.
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I mean,
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so far it's been no different,
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except now you've got a dozen Republican senators who were maybe not on board in
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past years,
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but have
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experienced significant political pressure.
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They are now standing up and saying that they're not going to vote for any budget
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bills unless the Senate leadership brings up this House eminent domain pipeline bill.
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with 12,
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I mean,
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so we could all do the math with 12 Republican senators and 16 Democrats who are
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all likely to vote against a budget bill.
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You don't get 26 votes and you don't pass a bill.
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So
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So they can significantly hold up the legislative session indefinitely if they
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can't bring a budget bill to the floor.
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This is a significant escalation of this issue.
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And the governor has really been along with Senate leadership on the side of the pipeline.
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So potentially another source of conflict between the House Republicans in
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particular and the governor,
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as well as the Senate.
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Yeah,
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there's a precedent for this in 2018 when a group of Senate Republicans said,
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except they didn't put the statement out publicly,
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but they basically said,
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we're not voting for a budget unless the House passes an abortion ban.
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And that was how we got the first near total abortion ban that they call the
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heartbeat bill was because a group of Senate Republicans were demanding that.
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And that's effective.
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For sure.
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I'm so fascinated if...
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First of all, that they went public.
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I mean,
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when they,
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you know,
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last week when a couple days in a row,
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they're standing up essentially saying this on the Senate floor,
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you know,
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in front of Republican leadership,
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their own caucus.
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But then to have that build to where we are now this week with 12 of them putting
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their names on there.
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some others thinking about whether they want to do that and are they going to be
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committed to this because it's pretty hard to back down now,
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right?
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You have these landowners pushing for this and now you've said, okay, we're digging in.
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We want the vote.
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So how do you, this can be pretty tough to cave on that demand, right?
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It's tough for leadership because I mean,
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they rely for their jobs on having a majority of their caucus in favor of them.
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And it, you know, if, if you got 12 Republicans, that means,
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And there's still a majority who don't want this pipeline bill to come to the floor.
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And so,
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you know,
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if it came to a leadership fight over this right now,
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the pipeline is the is where where the votes are,
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you know,
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and not that not the anti pipeline people.
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So I wouldn't expect them to try to oust Jack Whitver as leader anyway.
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But but, you know, it's it's an uncomfortable position for leadership to be in.
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I wonder if one of the reasons they went public with this is because if it's
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somehow connected to Governor Reynolds saying she's not going to run for a third term,
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because I feel all along that the Senate leadership in blocking all these pipeline bills,
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they've basically been running interference for the governor.
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She doesn't want to sign one of these and she doesn't want to veto one of these
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because it's a very volatile issue in rural Iowa.
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Well, now she's not running.
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So I feel like the logical thing for the Senate leadership to do is just pass the
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buck to the governor,
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get this thing,
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get these pipeline opponents off their backs,
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pass something,
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and then if the governor vetoes it,
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it's not their problem anymore.
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But it's interesting that the leadership still is wanting to make sure that a
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pipeline bill doesn't get to the governor's desk.
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Well,
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then you've got some of these pro pipeline folks that,
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you know,
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the Bruce Rastetter's of the world have been huge Republican donors in the past,
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including to
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the legislature and the legislative leaders.
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And so there's still,
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you know,
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there's still a motive,
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I think,
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to stick with that,
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you know,
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regardless of of concern about,
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you know,
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12 senators.
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So I do think that there's there's there's multiple pressures here.
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I was talking to some of the members yesterday and I had floated this scenario of
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because I was really struggling.
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I mean, like what?
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you know, one of the reasons why we like this kind of stuff is the strategy, right?
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You know, trying to gameplay how this stuff's going to figure out.
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That's why I'm a sports fan,
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so I always feel similarities and,
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you know,
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kind of that aspect of it.
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And so I was trying to gameplay,
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all right,
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if these 12 remain firm and if there truly are some other ones who maybe support this,
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but aren't quite sure if they want to publicly say,
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hey,
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we're with you and we're going to do this too,
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then how do you solve it?
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So does Whitford finally acquiesce and say, okay, fine, let's have the vote.
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So we can move everything else forward and let's say they then pass it because you
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would assume some form of a ban goes through,
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then you leave it to the governor.
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So I wanted to know, hey, is that your way out here?
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And it seemed like I was getting pretty mixed responses from the members on this,
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that yes,
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that could be a way to go.
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Puts it all on the gov.
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She's not running again.
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So then...
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You know, she sort of takes the fallout.
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But then some others were saying,
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though,
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that that will completely unless she is supportive of that,
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where she's willing to do that,
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that could just annihilate the relationship between Senate Republicans and the
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governor for her final year ahead.
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So it's sort of interesting how people had different the caucus had different thoughts on it.
(00:18:29):
why I thought it was a mistake for the governor not to wait until the end of the
(00:18:33):
legislative session before she announced she wasn't running again.
(00:18:36):
I mean,
(00:18:37):
I think it was about what we were talking about before,
(00:18:39):
the sort of public dissing of the governor,
(00:18:43):
comparing her to Chuck Culver,
(00:18:45):
for heaven's sake.
(00:18:47):
I don't think any of that would have been happening if she hadn't labeled herself a
(00:18:51):
lame duck before the end of the legislative session.
(00:18:54):
Yeah, what did she say?
(00:18:56):
Sort of kind of the similar reason that she has for back when she endorsed DeSantis.
(00:19:05):
She said that she felt that she had come to that point.
(00:19:08):
Why hold it?
(00:19:09):
Just put it out there.
(00:19:10):
And so she did.
(00:19:11):
Specifically with this, she said she had talked to her dad about it.
(00:19:16):
And that she was struggling for a while with it.
(00:19:19):
And then she got a little emotional talking about this,
(00:19:21):
but said that it was in the back of her mind.
(00:19:24):
She told her dad she was thinking about it.
(00:19:26):
And, you know, her mom's been pretty ill dealing with some serious health matters.
(00:19:32):
And they're both going to be 87.
(00:19:33):
So they're, you know, they're getting up there in age.
(00:19:36):
and she realized that she hadn't seen her dad in three weeks and caring for her mom
(00:19:41):
had really worn down her dad and it just sort of all hit her and she just said I
(00:19:45):
need to be there for my family this is the you know these are the reasons that she
(00:19:49):
gave for this and she said that she felt she owed it to people that since she had
(00:19:54):
reached that point why speculate anymore and then
(00:19:59):
you know, let the rest of the process figure out.
(00:20:01):
But to Kathie's point, that's exactly what I thought about.
(00:20:04):
Now you're sort of a lame ducker for two sessions instead of one.
(00:20:10):
And that's why I'm so fascinated,
(00:20:13):
maybe not the Grassley Reynolds thing,
(00:20:15):
which is nice parlor intrigue,
(00:20:17):
but with the 12 senators and how they solve the eminent domain thing,
(00:20:24):
If Whitford has to eventually just say, all right, the heck with it, I'm stuck.
(00:20:27):
Put the vote out there and then let's just dump it on the governor and she can deal with it.
(00:20:32):
If they really decide to go that way.
(00:20:34):
I think whatever happens, I think we're looking at a few weeks.
(00:20:38):
I do not think they're going to get things wrapped up next week.
(00:20:41):
I feel in 2021,
(00:20:43):
they were at the standoff over the school voucher bill and it lasted for at least
(00:20:47):
three weeks,
(00:20:48):
if not four.
(00:20:49):
So I think that we might maybe finishing up closer to Memorial Day.
(00:20:55):
Yeah, it's cringing.
(00:20:58):
I know I said that the average Iowan couldn't care less.
(00:21:02):
It makes no difference to them.
(00:21:04):
But, you know, it does make a difference to our lives.
(00:21:07):
It's like,
(00:21:07):
you know,
(00:21:08):
waiting for school to let out and somebody comes along and says,
(00:21:10):
hey,
(00:21:11):
kids,
(00:21:11):
guess what?
(00:21:12):
You've got three more weeks of school.
(00:21:16):
And, you know, and truthfully, as we know, the legislators don't want this either.
(00:21:19):
I mean, many of them have other jobs.
(00:21:22):
Many of them have family obligations or travel plans or whatever,
(00:21:25):
and they're traveling on their own dime now.
(00:21:28):
So they're not going to come here for no reason,
(00:21:30):
which is why we would expect that they may not even be around part or all of next week,
(00:21:36):
most of them,
(00:21:36):
depending on how this goes.
(00:21:38):
Right.
(00:21:40):
Yeah.
(00:21:41):
I think that, um,
(00:21:43):
Part of the issue here is that we don't have legislative leaders that are itching
(00:21:49):
to get into the fields anymore.
(00:21:52):
You know,
(00:21:52):
you've got one,
(00:21:54):
you know,
(00:21:55):
but,
(00:21:56):
you know,
(00:21:56):
I think he's got somebody else doing the farm work,
(00:21:59):
you know,
(00:21:59):
at least at this part.
(00:22:01):
He was there this week, though.
(00:22:03):
Yeah, he was planting Wednesday.
(00:22:05):
yeah but there's you know it used to be that we had a lot more farmers um in the
(00:22:12):
legislature who uh were really itching to get session done and get out of here and
(00:22:17):
go go plant and uh and that is just it's not it's not the case anymore there's not
(00:22:22):
that sort of pressure from people do have pressure from their lives and other
(00:22:26):
things that they have going on and um
(00:22:29):
For sure.
(00:22:30):
And in some cases, leaving them home while the leaders work out deals alleviates some of that.
(00:22:38):
But it's still,
(00:22:39):
I mean,
(00:22:40):
ultimately,
(00:22:41):
it's going to be to the benefit of leaders to have members who really want to wrap
(00:22:46):
up and end the session.
(00:22:48):
Okay, we need to transition to the next topic.
(00:22:52):
And this is one of my,
(00:22:53):
I don't know if I should say least favorite,
(00:22:55):
because it's probably too opinionated.
(00:22:56):
But as a TV guy who has to break down stories into like,
(00:23:02):
at best,
(00:23:02):
minute and a half,
(00:23:03):
minute 45,
(00:23:04):
maybe two minute chunks,
(00:23:05):
covering this ongoing saga of State Auditor Rob Sand,
(00:23:11):
this screwed up funding with the Iowa Judicial Branch where
(00:23:17):
Revenue from fines was going to the wrong place instead of where it was supposed to
(00:23:22):
go after some after they had changed the law and required them to do this differently.
(00:23:28):
And House Republicans legislative Republicans really but this was a House Oversight Committee,
(00:23:35):
so they bring Rob Sand in there to kind of talk about this and
(00:23:40):
We have joked a million times that this is like this.
(00:23:42):
He said, he said, he said, he said, he said.
(00:23:45):
It's so complicated and convoluted.
(00:23:48):
Rob Sand's going to run for governor.
(00:23:50):
Republicans know it.
(00:23:51):
This sort of drags out, and then Sand kind of defends what's going on.
(00:23:56):
They accuse him of, hey, you should have figured out something was screwed up earlier.
(00:24:01):
He's explained the limitations of this all.
(00:24:04):
It probably just took me a minute and a half to even say that gibberish.
(00:24:07):
So it's hard to follow the like day-to-day developments of this.
(00:24:11):
What the heck is going on and will this ever end?
(00:24:14):
It's not going to end until after the next election,
(00:24:17):
because this will be an issue that they keep bringing up in the context of Rob's hand.
(00:24:22):
So I'm just going to try to give a very brief overview.
(00:24:25):
I'm going to time you and see if you can do this in a minute and a half.
(00:24:29):
Okay, thank you.
(00:24:29):
The legislature changed the law.
(00:24:31):
In June of 2020,
(00:24:33):
they changed something with how these fees had to be allocated,
(00:24:37):
and it went into effect on July 1st.
(00:24:39):
So the judicial branch had less than a month to make these big changes,
(00:24:43):
and that seems to be where a lot of the mistakes happen.
(00:24:45):
But this wasn't really discovered until the summer of 2022.
(00:24:50):
The auditor's office was notified in October of 2022.
(00:24:54):
So the reason why the legislators are really hammering sand is,
(00:24:57):
why didn't his office do a special investigation,
(00:25:00):
inform legislators that this was going on?
(00:25:03):
And he keeps saying, our office has to keep a lot of things confidential.
(00:25:07):
You should be asking the Department of Transportation and the Department of
(00:25:09):
Management why they didn't notify the legislature when they noticed these problems
(00:25:14):
in the summer of 2022.
(00:25:16):
And there's a lot of sparring over who knew what and whether the auditors did
(00:25:20):
enough and whether other people did enough.
(00:25:22):
But the point is that this is going to be a big part of their case against Rob Sand
(00:25:26):
when he runs for governor.
(00:25:28):
Try to summarize that in a 30-second TV ad.
(00:25:32):
Okay, let's see.
(00:25:35):
He left victim services under funding.
(00:25:38):
No, no, no.
(00:25:39):
The money went to the state's general fund instead of going to specific funds.
(00:25:43):
In the 30-second ad,
(00:25:44):
they'll say this and that service was underfunded because Rob Sand didn't do his job,
(00:25:49):
which isn't really accurate because he wasn't in control of where the money was going,
(00:25:53):
but that'll just be the way it's presented in an ad.
(00:25:56):
Plus, he says that nothing was underfunded because there was money left in those accounts.
(00:26:01):
Victim services was the big one.
(00:26:04):
I think that they'll try to make the case.
(00:26:07):
And Brenna Byrd,
(00:26:08):
who also coincidentally may be running for governor,
(00:26:13):
you know,
(00:26:13):
she's the one who's saying,
(00:26:14):
you know,
(00:26:15):
well,
(00:26:15):
victim services were hurt because of this.
(00:26:18):
And so, yeah, I mean, I just think it's kind of...
(00:26:21):
kind of a nothing burger, really.
(00:26:23):
Rob Sand pointed out this is point, what did he say, 0.013% of the budget for these funds.
(00:26:35):
So it wasn't a lot of money and the money wasn't lost.
(00:26:39):
It was just put in the wrong account.
(00:26:42):
He compared it to
(00:26:44):
You know,
(00:26:45):
if you had,
(00:26:46):
you know,
(00:26:46):
money in your checking account,
(00:26:48):
it accidentally got deposited in your savings account.
(00:26:51):
It's still your money.
(00:26:52):
You still have control of it.
(00:26:53):
It's just in the wrong pocket.
(00:26:55):
So,
(00:26:55):
I mean,
(00:26:55):
I do think,
(00:26:56):
you know,
(00:26:56):
when it comes right down to it,
(00:26:58):
this is not,
(00:26:59):
you know,
(00:27:01):
I just don't see it really being,
(00:27:03):
you know,
(00:27:04):
it really resonating with voters in a gubernatorial campaign.
(00:27:08):
Yeah, it's one thing that they can
(00:27:10):
They can try to make the case that Rob Sand was somehow asleep at the switch or he
(00:27:13):
was hiding something.
(00:27:15):
But, you know, it just doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.
(00:27:21):
And correct me if I'm wrong here,
(00:27:22):
but doesn't the legislature need to fix this for whatever reason?
(00:27:26):
Aren't they the ones that have to do something so that the money can get shifted
(00:27:30):
back to where it's supposed to be since I went to the general fund?
(00:27:32):
Have you heard that?
(00:27:34):
I think there is something like that.
(00:27:35):
I mean, the judicial branch is the one that has to fix whatever the computer coding error was.
(00:27:39):
But now that we know that money was deposited wrongly into the general fund,
(00:27:44):
I do believe that that requires a legislative fix.
(00:27:48):
It's not like they don't have the money.
(00:27:49):
I mean, they have billions in reserves.
(00:27:52):
So it's not like the money has already been spent on something else.
(00:27:57):
They can do it if they want to.
(00:27:59):
And the House Oversight Committee, I mean, they've already had two lengthy meetings on this.
(00:28:03):
They're planning at least one more.
(00:28:06):
And they just haven't,
(00:28:08):
if they were aggressive in investigating all other kinds of things,
(00:28:11):
then I would understand that more.
(00:28:14):
But to me,
(00:28:15):
it's clear that this is a political move because Rob Sand is planning to run for
(00:28:20):
governor because there are any,
(00:28:21):
I mean,
(00:28:21):
the state spent almost $50 million on the workday computer system that was abandoned.
(00:28:26):
There's been no oversight committee hearing on that.
(00:28:29):
Is this the only topic that oversight has gotten together to talk about this year?
(00:28:35):
Have they had meetings for any other reason?
(00:28:37):
No, I believe this is the only thing they've investigated this year.
(00:28:42):
Yeah,
(00:28:42):
I mean,
(00:28:43):
they could get together and talk about why nursing homes are not being investigated
(00:28:49):
to the point where abuse and neglect cases are not happening.
(00:28:54):
They could investigate whether...
(00:28:58):
A voter or family privacy is being protected with the separate contractor for the
(00:29:06):
school voucher program.
(00:29:07):
That was something that Democrats raised as a, as a, as a concern.
(00:29:11):
So,
(00:29:11):
I mean,
(00:29:11):
I think that there's a lot of other things that they could get together and talk
(00:29:14):
about and to your point sort of underscores the idea that this is probably political.
(00:29:20):
When we last met,
(00:29:24):
last Friday,
(00:29:25):
that was when the governor's release came out that she was suing the Des Moines
(00:29:32):
Register because she did not want to have the office release some inter-office communications,
(00:29:40):
all related to her comments that she had made when she was sitting there at that
(00:29:46):
hearing in Washington.
(00:29:48):
D.C.
(00:29:49):
So there was a clearly that was a not a good moment for her and they had to kind of
(00:29:54):
clean it up before when she could not.
(00:29:57):
Could not specifically say that the Lutheran services were not a viable were not a
(00:30:03):
money laundering operation,
(00:30:06):
which was kind of astounding what had happened and you know I think she would.
(00:30:10):
argue that she sort of got caught up with and all kinds of people are hollering and
(00:30:14):
blah blah blah and interrupting and uh it took a bit for her to kind of clean up
(00:30:19):
that mess but anyway so the register's trying to get a hold of some of these
(00:30:22):
inter-office communications regarding this and then we have this lawsuit who wants
(00:30:29):
to pick it up
(00:30:30):
yeah so with the governor so first of all the register had asked uh for yes
(00:30:37):
communication uh among the governor's staff about uh using the keyword lutheran
(00:30:42):
services of iowa or lutheran social services um they're a refugee aid organization
(00:30:49):
And the background of this is that one of President Trump's former advisors,
(00:30:53):
Michael Flynn,
(00:30:54):
had referred to this organization as a money laundering organization.
(00:30:58):
So she was asked about it at a U.S.
(00:31:01):
House Oversight Committee meeting,
(00:31:02):
which was,
(00:31:03):
I think,
(00:31:03):
mostly about sort of the doge issues and clearly caught her off guard.
(00:31:08):
She gave a non answer.
(00:31:11):
And then she got criticized for not standing up for Lutheran Social Services.
(00:31:15):
She came back a couple of days later and said,
(00:31:16):
of course,
(00:31:17):
they're a wonderful organization and not a money launderer.
(00:31:20):
So.
(00:31:21):
So and it was I have to give the register credit creative idea on their part to
(00:31:25):
find out what her staff was telling her before she came out with that with that
(00:31:31):
sort of cleanup statement.
(00:31:33):
And so according to the lawsuit filed by the governor's office,
(00:31:38):
the register received about 800 documents as a result of this freedom of
(00:31:44):
information and request.
(00:31:46):
There were four emails that were withheld.
(00:31:50):
And there were four emails that were circulated among senior advisors to the governor,
(00:31:54):
but not the governor.
(00:31:55):
And they were labeled media prep.
(00:31:58):
So I think this was I don't remember if that was the governor's office or the
(00:32:01):
register that that disclosed that part.
(00:32:03):
But so.
(00:32:06):
This is where it gets weird.
(00:32:07):
OK,
(00:32:08):
normally if you're if you're a person who's seeking public documents and the
(00:32:14):
custodian of the documents won't give them up,
(00:32:17):
you're the one who goes to court.
(00:32:20):
Instead, the governor preemptively files this lawsuit.
(00:32:24):
saying we want to enjoy the register,
(00:32:27):
stop the register for coming after us for these four documents because we're
(00:32:31):
claiming executive privilege for these,
(00:32:33):
which is not really actually in the law,
(00:32:37):
the open meetings and records law.
(00:32:39):
There's a little bit of case law dealing with this,
(00:32:42):
and Laura can describe that better than I can.
(00:32:45):
But but so,
(00:32:47):
you know,
(00:32:47):
if she goes to court preemptively to to stop the register,
(00:32:52):
which is concerning to me,
(00:32:53):
I wrote a column about it.
(00:32:55):
It's concerning to me because,
(00:32:56):
you know,
(00:32:57):
so now if I'm somebody who wants to request public records,
(00:33:01):
does this mean that if the government doesn't want to give them up,
(00:33:03):
they're just going to sue me and I'm going to have to deal with a lawsuit when,
(00:33:07):
you know,
(00:33:08):
when maybe I was ready to let it go?
(00:33:10):
You know,
(00:33:10):
maybe I didn't think the story was important enough to go to court and spend that
(00:33:13):
money over it.
(00:33:15):
And so I think this is sort of a,
(00:33:19):
it's very unusual,
(00:33:21):
could have a chilling effect on open meetings and records.
(00:33:24):
And I don't think the governor is right that she has a executive privilege that
(00:33:32):
prevents her from releasing whatever records she doesn't wanna release.
(00:33:37):
And there was a second lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of Iowa Atheists and
(00:33:41):
Free Thinkers later the same day that the governor sued the register.
(00:33:45):
And the heart of it is the same thing,
(00:33:47):
where Jason Benal of the Atheists and Free Thinkers had requested a bunch of
(00:33:51):
documents related to the decision to cancel the Satanic Temple's holiday event.
(00:33:56):
And
(00:33:57):
Some records were provided, but then others were withheld over executive privilege, supposedly.
(00:34:01):
This included media prep documents and an agency report from the Department of
(00:34:06):
Administrative Services.
(00:34:07):
And the ACLU and the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers are saying,
(00:34:10):
hey,
(00:34:10):
this executive privilege exemption doesn't really exist.
(00:34:13):
I want to say one thing about the 800-plus pages of documents.
(00:34:17):
records that the governor's office keeps saying that they provided more than 800
(00:34:21):
pages of records and they're only withholding four.
(00:34:23):
Most of that file is just media clippings.
(00:34:27):
So endless copies of media clippings that were already in the public domain.
(00:34:32):
So it's not like they provided 800 pages of emails and are only withholding four.
(00:34:37):
So the newsworthy material is clearly in whatever they're withholding.
(00:34:42):
And,
(00:34:42):
you know,
(00:34:42):
it makes me wonder,
(00:34:43):
OK,
(00:34:43):
so what is in these these emails that is so explosive that the governor would be
(00:34:50):
willing to go to court over this?
(00:34:51):
I mean,
(00:34:52):
maybe it's just a convenient way to try to carve out some sort of executive privilege,
(00:34:56):
but it seems like it's not an ideal case for that.
(00:35:00):
Also,
(00:35:01):
mainly because the governor's not even copied on, the emails are not from her or to her.
(00:35:06):
She's not copied on them.
(00:35:07):
But also,
(00:35:08):
you know,
(00:35:10):
so maybe some of her advisors said,
(00:35:14):
well,
(00:35:14):
hell yes,
(00:35:15):
at Lutheran Services,
(00:35:17):
it's a money launderer and you should just come out and say that.
(00:35:19):
What's the matter with you?
(00:35:20):
You know, or whatever.
(00:35:21):
Or maybe some of them are saying to each other, I can't believe the governor blew this.
(00:35:25):
That's what I wonder.
(00:35:27):
That's what I think, yeah.
(00:35:29):
Well,
(00:35:30):
it looks like in a couple years from now,
(00:35:33):
we may get an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that outlines the scope of the executive
(00:35:37):
privilege under the Iowa Constitution and whether that is a valid reason to
(00:35:41):
withhold public records.
(00:35:42):
It's not one of the more than 70 exemptions listed in the public records law.
(00:35:47):
Yeah.
(00:35:48):
And so she's also arguing executive privilege for the atheist and free thinkers case.
(00:35:54):
And now we've got a pair of cases that could,
(00:35:57):
in fact,
(00:35:57):
test whether the governor does have some sort of executive privilege.
(00:36:03):
The Supreme Court in a lawsuit that both Laura and I were involved in,
(00:36:10):
open records lawsuit.
(00:36:12):
The governor did early on bring up executive privilege in that case,
(00:36:15):
but then really didn't focus on it.
(00:36:17):
And the ruling didn't really focus on that.
(00:36:20):
And it wasn't exactly on point because that case didn't involve them invoking
(00:36:24):
executive privilege to deny us the records.
(00:36:27):
That was a case where they had excessively delayed for months or more than a year
(00:36:31):
in some cases providing records.
(00:36:33):
And we were suing saying that they violated the open records law by this excessive delay.
(00:36:38):
And so they were saying that if you,
(00:36:40):
if the court,
(00:36:41):
they were trying to get our lawsuit tossed out and they were saying,
(00:36:43):
if you let these people go to court and say that it took us too long,
(00:36:47):
that they're going to,
(00:36:48):
in the discovery process,
(00:36:49):
they're going to be getting documents that's going to invade her executive privilege.
(00:36:52):
So it was really quite different from what they're saying now,
(00:36:55):
which is that the constitution inherently creates this executive privilege.
(00:36:59):
And that is a reason that the governor can just decide whatever documents she's
(00:37:03):
going to release or not release.
(00:37:04):
And I'm very curious to see how the Iowa Supreme Court handles that.
(00:37:09):
I would just say,
(00:37:12):
you know,
(00:37:12):
that that blows a huge hole in the Open Meetings and Records Act,
(00:37:18):
because I mean,
(00:37:18):
at least under what the governor is asserting right now,
(00:37:21):
she could just not release any documents that she doesn't want to release.
(00:37:26):
And these are all the far bigger points about this.
(00:37:28):
I am hung up on going back when this initially happened that I do understand,
(00:37:35):
I can see at least when you're sitting there and these hearings are a,
(00:37:40):
well,
(00:37:42):
this is a podcast,
(00:37:43):
I can say shit show.
(00:37:45):
I mean,
(00:37:46):
you know,
(00:37:46):
because the member can kind of be like,
(00:37:49):
okay,
(00:37:50):
I'm reclaiming my time and whatever.
(00:37:51):
They sort of shut up the guest and people are interrupting and they're all looking
(00:37:54):
for viral moments.
(00:37:55):
And probably the governor walked into something that she really wasn't expecting,
(00:38:00):
you know,
(00:38:01):
whether she was naive about it or not prepped right or who knows what.
(00:38:06):
But,
(00:38:07):
you know,
(00:38:07):
clearly in that moment when you got coming at you and interrupting and all that
(00:38:11):
kind of stuff.
(00:38:12):
So let's say she got all tongue tied and froze in the moment and all kinds of stuff.
(00:38:16):
And at her core does not believe that this is this money laundering operation would be,
(00:38:22):
which would be a hell of an operation,
(00:38:23):
a hell of an allegation and kind of an astounding thing.
(00:38:28):
Allegation with with no basis in reality that anyone is familiar with,
(00:38:33):
but what I never understood with that is that we're all watching it real time.
(00:38:37):
And even if in that moment you're not like oh gosh she didn't really say no to that.
(00:38:43):
The reaction and pushback against it was almost immediate.
(00:38:48):
So it was bizarre to me why it took days to push back against it to begin with,
(00:38:55):
which makes me wonder,
(00:38:57):
to Kathie's point,
(00:38:58):
if it was the second half of that,
(00:39:00):
staff going back and forth with,
(00:39:02):
holy crap,
(00:39:03):
what a mess this is.
(00:39:05):
I don't know why that conversation doesn't happen that night after it happened.
(00:39:10):
And that night or the next morning,
(00:39:13):
the statement comes out with,
(00:39:14):
this group has done amazing things.
(00:39:17):
We believe in them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
(00:39:19):
I don't know why it took days to put something out to express something positive.
(00:39:24):
here's the thing so even so it's a trap she falls into it yeah it was stupid um
(00:39:30):
this is a one-day story and she's not running for re-election right so the
(00:39:39):
consequences of her screwing up at this thing if you know if she really did it was
(00:39:44):
i mean i think it was a minor minor gaffe frankly
(00:39:49):
that she came back and corrected.
(00:39:52):
She's not running for real election.
(00:39:53):
So why, what's the big deal?
(00:39:57):
I wanna just channel Randy Evans,
(00:40:00):
another member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative who also wrote about this in his column,
(00:40:03):
Stray Thoughts,
(00:40:04):
but he quoted from,
(00:40:05):
this comes directly from the open record statute that says that if there is a court
(00:40:11):
action under this chapter,
(00:40:13):
the court shall take into account the policy of this chapter that free and open
(00:40:17):
examination of public records is generally in the public interest,
(00:40:21):
even though such examination may cause inconvenience or embarrassment
(00:40:25):
to public officials or others.
(00:40:27):
That is from the statute.
(00:40:29):
And this came up in the ACLU's lawsuit.
(00:40:32):
This is,
(00:40:32):
look,
(00:40:33):
whatever the governor's office and her staff,
(00:40:35):
whatever they said about canceling the satanic display,
(00:40:38):
this is not like a matter of national security that you think of when you're
(00:40:42):
talking about executive privilege.
(00:40:44):
This is something that may be embarrassing if it comes out.
(00:40:49):
All right.
(00:40:49):
You know,
(00:40:50):
we usually have sort of an unofficial goal of the length of our podcast,
(00:40:53):
but clearly had some meaty things.
(00:40:56):
So for those of you who have consumed this,
(00:40:58):
perhaps you had time for an additional cup of coffee to get you through this.
(00:41:04):
Kathie and Laura, thank you, as always.
(00:41:06):
Have a great weekend.
(00:41:07):
And let's enjoy the month of May together as we wait for this legislative session
(00:41:12):
to end and see if it can end before June arrives.
(00:41:15):
That would be nice.
(00:41:17):
And thank you all for joining us again this week on the Iowa Down Ballot podcast.
(00:41:23):
We want to give special thanks to our producer,
(00:41:25):
Spencer Dirks,
(00:41:27):
and to D'Artagnan Brown for the music that you hear every week.
(00:41:32):
Thanks for your support.
(00:41:33):
Thanks for your support of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.
(00:41:37):
And we will talk to you next week.
(00:41:39):
Maybe it's the end of the session.
(00:41:41):
Likely it will not be.
(00:41:43):
Stay tuned.
(00:41:43):
We'll find out.
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