Iowa regents to start taking public comment during meetings

Fewer than two hours after being appointed president of Iowa's Board of Regents, Michael Richards on Monday announced plans to start holding public comment periods during board meetings.

That change - marking a first for the board - comes after years of demands from critics wanting the opportunity to speak directly to regents during their regular meetings, which rotate across the regent campuses.

Right now, members of the public who want to speak to regents must attend separate transparency hearings on each of the campuses days before the regular board meetings and make their comments into a camera. Recordings of those comments are made available to the regents, who are not present for the hearings.

No one confirms regents watch the videos, and speakers have said they often don't receive feedback. Members of the public wanting to address the board during a regular meeting historically have had to request special permission and receive approval to do so.

But Richards said he plans to institute public comment periods during board meetings as soon as June, although finalizing details might delay the change until the following meeting in early August. Regent spokesman Josh Lehman confirmed the board never before has offered a public comment period during its meetings.

The goal, according to Richards, is to 'increase our transparency and accountability and oversight with the universities.”

'That does include allowing the public a chance to comment openly about what they see with the universities,” Richards said.

The new public comment periods replace the transparency hearings scheduled at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, University of Northern Iowa, Iowa School for the Deaf, Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School and the Board of Regents Office in Urbandale.

Under fire for lack of transparency, the board in 2013 formed a 'transparency task force” charged with recommending best practices for responding to public information requests and improving access to public information.

That 10-member group recommended the public comment hearings at each university, which must last one hour and be staffed by university transparency officers or designees. But some task force members pushed for the comment periods at meetings.

'A public comment period is something we've been working on for three years,” said Joe Gorton, a UNI professor and president of that institution's faculty union. 'It is going to be one of the most important and positive developments for the Board of Regents ever.”

The move will not only benefit the public looking to provide direct input to those who govern Iowa's public institutions, Gorton said, but is going to aid the regents themselves.

'It will allow the regents to acquire a lot of information from stakeholders they otherwise wouldn't hear from,” Gorton said.

Since the university has been holding its separate transparency hearings, they've been sparsely attended. Even in fall 2015 - during one of the most contentious times at the University of Iowa, with President Bruce Harreld's controversial hire - The Gazette reported no one had attended any of the regent public hearings on the UI campus the entire year.

Only a handful of people overall attended the dozens of hearings that were held across the campuses that year. And attendance has not picked up significantly since that time.

Bob Downer, a former regent who long has advocated for public hearings during board meetings, said he's encouraged by the news that change is coming.

'I am very pleased,” he said. 'It seems to me that the process that was adopted did not work very well because so few people took the opportunity to express themselves in those sessions.”

Despite concerns past regent leaders voiced about the time public comment could take during meetings, Downer said he always believed in the possibility of a process keeping comments relatively short to ensure they don't take away from regular board business.

'I think this signals an attitude of being more open and collaborative than what it has appeared to me has been the case for the last several years,” Downer said.

l Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com