Fallout over secret settlements causing Iowa partisan divide

DES MOINES - Expanding openness, transparency and accountability in state government has become the new partisan divide on the split-control Legislature's path to adjournment.

Republicans say there's an easy fix to increasing public knowledge of employee settlements - making Gov. Terry Branstad's executive order state law, as the GOP-led Iowa House voted to do this month.

Branstad says it's not enough to prohibit secret employment settlements from taking place as he directed, he wants state lawmakers to ease overly broad confidentiality protections for state employees who are dismissed or disciplined for inappropriate on-the-job action.

'It seems to me that it's the common-sense thing for us to do,” said Senate GOP leader Bill Dix of Shell Rock, urging his colleagues to pass House File 2462 and send it to the governor for his signature.

However, Democrats who control the Iowa Senate say the questions keep coming as they work to unravel details of an agency reorganization that included a mass layoff and some secret payments to keep the ex-employees from publicly discussing the shake-up. For starters, they say, the problem they are trying to address went beyond previous administrations when so-called 'hush money” was added to settlement agreements in exchange for confidentiality.

Democrats noted that Branstad had his office conduct an internal review hoping to put the matter to rest, only to have to turn around and fire his director at the state Department of Administrative Services due to contradictory evidence showing that offers were made to pay laid-off employees for their silence.

'We need answers,” said Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, during the nearly one hour that senators spent haranguing each other of the secret-settlements matter Tuesday.

'It is also our job to provide oversight and to make sure the new sheriff is telling the truth,” Hogg said, hearkening back to a 2011 reference Branstad made early in his fifth term. 'If the new sheriff has no clothes, someone has to be willing to speak up.”

Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines, said legislative changes must go farther to address hiring practices, procurement procedures, private contracting and other problems that have surfaced along with charges of cronyism, favoritism and employee reclassifications that have 'unfolded” in Government Oversight hearings.

'I for one don't want to be part of sweeping the problem under the rug. I know everybody wants the problem to go away,” said McCoy, who noted the House bill did not go far enough and that $22 million in infrastructure requests had been pulled from a fiscal 2015 budget bill until questions get answered.

'If the tables were turned and this was a Democratic administration and these positions were being filled by political cronies,” McCoy told his colleagues, 'I can't help but believe that people wouldn't be squealing like castrated pigs.”

Sen. Julian Garrett, R-Indianola, said he has sat through all of the Oversight Committee hearings and is concerned the attention mainly has been on the dozen or so laid-off employees while little has been said about the taxpayer savings that have been achieved. He said the new DAS hires and private contracts must be working properly since about 18 months have passed without incident.

'If these people were incompetent and not doing the job, you'd think after a year and a half that we would have heard about it. That's not the case,” he said.

'So far and again today, all we hear is talk, talk, talk,” Dix said. 'Iowans know talk is cheap and it is actions that resolve problems.”

Sen. Sandy Greiner, R-Washington, another Oversight Committee member, said she is getting increasingly concerned that Senate Democrats and no intention of taking up the House bill given Tuesday's discussion of a significantly expanded version that the House or governor might not accept.

'I think we'd be making an incredibly serious mistake to do nothing,” she told majority Democrats. 'If we do nothing, it's in your hands.”

Scheduling issues forced the postponed of Tuesday's Government Oversight Committee meeting. Panel members were slated to resume questioning Doug Woodley, DAS general services enterprise chief operating officer, and Paul Carlson, DAS chief resource maximization officer, when the committee reconvenes Wednesday.