Riverdale ruling is victory for all citizens

The Des Moines Register

---

Iowa law requires that state and local governments do the public's business in public. But the open-records and open-meetings laws are rarely if ever enforced by state or county prosecutors, so the job often falls to citizens who have to hire their own lawyers.

That's not good, but the law at least says citizens who successfully sue to gain access to public records “shall” be reimbursed by the government for “reasonable” legal expenses.

The Iowa Supreme Court recently clarified the standard for recovering legal fees in such cases. The ruling should make it harder for state and local governments to get away with violating the law and making citizens pay to prove it.

That would have been the outcome of a case in the Scott County community of Riverdale, where three residents successfully sued the city to obtain a copy of a security video showing a confrontation in city hall between them and the mayor. The citizens' lawyer submitted a bill for $71,000, which included fees for his time spent on the case over several months, depositions and expert witness fees. The trial court reduced the fee to $64,732, but the city argued it shouldn't pay anything, citing a “good faith” exception in the law.

The court rejected that argument. The good-faith exception applies only when a government body delays release of a public record to review whether it is legally required to release the record in question. In the Riverdale case, the court said, the city waived its right to claim the video recording could be kept confidential when the mayor showed it to a Quad City Times newspaper reporter. Thus, the good-faith exception in the law offered no safe harbor for the city.

On that point, the Supreme Court overruled an earlier Iowa Court of Appeals decision in the city's favor.

This case is not the first battle between Riverdale citizens and the city over public records. According to the Supreme Court ruling, the three citizens have filed numerous public-records requests with the city, and they have been involved in seven prior public-records lawsuits against the city. While it is fair to say relations have been strained between some residents of Riverdale and city officials, the court nonetheless said the law was on the citizens' side in this instance.

Writing for the court, Justice Thomas Waterman quoted the famous saying that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” But,

Waterman added, “Citizens and public officials sometimes must turn to the courts to resolve disputes over access to information. Statutory attorney-fee awards motivate lawyers to step up and fight city hall on behalf of residents whose elected officials refuse requests for disclosure.”

The Riverdale case, Waterman wrote, “aptly illustrates the need for attorney-fee awards to motivate private attorneys to represent citizens who are improperly denied access to public records. The defendants were forced to litigate against their home city for 16 months before obtaining the video recording of their confrontation with the mayor.”

If the Court of Appeals' ruling in the city's favor had prevailed, those citizens would have had to pay the entire legal bill, even though they won their case. It would be ironic, indeed, to expect citizens to dig into their own pockets to enforce the laws designed to let the disinfecting rays of sunlight into state and local government.

Thus, the Supreme Court's ruling is a victory not only for three citizens in Riverdale, but also for all Iowans who believe in open government.