Applicants for Scott County supervisor can’t be kept secret

DES MOINES — The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that applicants for a vacant Scott County supervisor position cannot be kept secret.

In a 4-3 opinion, the Iowa Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s decision that the names of applicants to an appointed seat could be kept confidential.

The case involves a 2023 appointment to fill a vacancy on the five-member Scott County Board of Supervisors.

The county at the time declined to reveal the names of 13 applicants who had asked their applications be kept confidential.

Two Scott County residents, Allen Diercks and Diane Holst, sued, citing Iowa’s open records law and arguing the county should release the names and applications for what is typically a publicly elected position.

A district court ruled in favor of the county, and the two residents appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in December.

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The majority opinion, penned by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and joined by Justices Edward Mansfield, Dana Oxley and Matthew McDermott, reversed the district ruling.

“We hold that an application from an individual outside of government for a vacant county board of supervisors position that is being filled through the appointment process … is not a confidential record exempt from disclosure,” the majority wrote in its ruling.

Christensen noted supervisors are typically elected by voter, and residents weren’t deterred from applying because they weren’t promised in advance their applications would be kept private.

Justice David May, joined by Justices Thomas Waterman and Christopher McDonald, dissented, arguing the county followed established law and reasonably believed applicants would be deterred from applying without keeping their applications private.

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May warned that the ruling would have broader impacts on public sector job applicants.

“It will cause public employers to hesitate before promising confidentiality to applicants," May wrote. "It will also cause applicants to think twice before believing any promises of confidentiality. This may well result in smaller pools of qualified applicants for positions of responsibility in government.”

The Supreme Court remanded the case to district court and determined Scott County would be responsible for the court costs.

Open records advocates cheer ruling

Iowa Freedom of Information Council Executive Director Randy Evans called the ruling “an important victory for government transparency today.” He said in an email the council is evaluating the impact of the decision.

Mike Meloy, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, called the ruling a “monumental victory for the public's right to access public records and to know the names of any candidate for a public office.”

Scott County Supervisors Chair John Maxwell said in an emailed statement the county respects the court's ruling and is reviewing its details.

“We will evaluate our next steps to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and procedures as directed by the Court,” he said.

How vacancy was filled

In 2022, voters elected Tony Knobbe to be Scott County treasurer while he still had two years remaining in his term as a county supervisor. That created a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors in January 2023 when Knobbe was sworn in as treasurer.

As laid out by state statute, a committee of Knobbe, as treasurer, Scott County Auditor Kerri Tompkins and Scott County Recorder Rita Vargas met in a public meeting and decided to fill the vacant seat by appointment rather than call a special election.

The county asked for applicants to email a resume and cover letter to Tompkins. She received 27 applications for the position.

Nothing in the initial notice stated that applications would be kept confidential, the court majority stated in its decision. The three members of the committee also did not discuss keeping applications confidential in their initial meeting.

Former Assistant County Attorney Robert Cusack advised the committee to keep applications confidential if the applicants requested and suggested that a follow-up email be sent to each applicant to ask if they wanted their application to be kept private.

Tompkins followed Cusack’s direction, and 13 of the 27 applicants asked that their application be kept confidential.

Tompkins, Knobbe and Vargas met again Jan. 26 to appoint a supervisor. They discussed five applicants by referencing numbers assigned to each candidate and selected No. 16, Rita Rawson. Rawson’s name was revealed after the committee came to a decision.

Rawson ran for election to the seat as a Republican in November 2024 and lost.

Lawsuit filed

After Rawson was appointed, Diercks and Holst submitted records requests for the names of all the applicants for the supervisor’s seat.

Cusack responded with the names of applicants who did not request confidentiality but declined to provide the names of those who had requested their application be kept private, citing several court cases.

Diercks and Holst sued in district court. A judge ruled against them, saying an exemption to Iowa’s open records laws applied and cited the case of Sioux City v. Greater Sioux City Press Club, which determined employment applications for a vacant city manager position were exempt from disclosure.

Diercks and Holst appealed that ruling to the Iowa Supreme Court.

Justices: Applicants not deterred

The Supreme Court’s majority opinion stated in its analysis that, unlike the Sioux City case, Scott County only promised confidentiality after applications were submitted.

The majority opinion examined an exemption to the state open records law, which states communications from people outside government are confidential if the government “could reasonably believe that those persons would be discouraged from making them to that government body if they were available for general public examination.”

Scott County, Christensen wrote, did not meet its burden to prove that Tompkins could have reasonably believed that making the applications publicly available would have deterred people from submitting.

“The fact that twenty-seven candidates applied without a promise of confidentiality suggests that the prospect of disclosure did not in fact deter people from submitting applications,” the majority opinion’s ruling states.

The ruling stated, too, that the supervisor’s position is by nature more public than unelected county employees.

“Supervisors are not just public officials, they are elected officials, elected biennially by the voters of Scott County to serve four-year terms,” the ruling states.