Iowans’ access to records not changed much

Since Sept. 11, 2001, Iowans have experienced modest, security-driven reductions in access to the state's public records.

The Legislature in 2001 added an access exemption under the public records law for critical asset-protection plans. Ten years later, the plans are exempt from being copied in any manner. Residents may examine the lists after approval of a written request, however.

In 2006, the Legislature added an exemption for information about security procedures or emergency preparedness developed for the protection of government employees, visitors and property “if disclosure could reasonably be expected to jeopardize” those people or property.

Exemptions created in 2002 for security procedures or emergency preparedness plans for schools and for certain records by public airports, municipal corporations, municipal utilities and rural water districts were repealed in 2007.

Another legislative change permitted the dissemination of previously exempt intelligence data if sharing that information would protect a person or property from a threat of imminent, serious harm.

Until that 2003 revision, the Department of Public Safety might have learned of a plan to sabotage a public water supply but would not have been able to share the information with municipal water treatment plant officials.

“The change gives us more latitude to release information that was once purely confidential,” said Jim Saunders, director of Public Safety's Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center. “We're now able to provide information to that organization to take steps to … prevent something from happening.”

The Bush administration used 9/11 as the basis for restricting access to federal records. On Oct. 12, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memo informing federal agencies they had considerably more discretion in denying Freedom of Information requests than had been the case.

“The memo literally changed the marching orders from openness to closure,” said Keith Werhan, vice dean of Tulane University Law School, in the Tulane Law Review.

First Amendment advocates expressed “a lot of concerns immediately after 9/11 that the changes in federal law and state law in response to terrorist acts were going to have an adverse impact on Iowans' access to information,” said Kathleen Richardson with the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.

“There were changes in the state public records law that did limit access in some areas,” she said. “In retrospect … it hasn't been as much of an issue in Iowa as maybe on the coasts or areas with bigger populations.”

President Barack Obama issued a memorandum directing federal agencies to administer the Freedom of Information Act “with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” Attorney General Eric Holder formally rescinded Ashcroft's memo in March 2009.

Still, implementation of the Obama-Holder policy has been slow and incomplete, said Daniel Metcalfe, executive director of a FOIA research center at American University's College of Law.