A civil rights history project derailed by a veto pen.

With the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer approaching, Gov. Terry Branstad used his veto pen to give the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids freedom from state funding.

The governor scrapped a budget bill that included $300,000 for a civil rights oral history project at the museum. No doubt that history would include the summer of 1964, when college students from across the country traveled to the South to help register black voters, knowing full well they would be beaten or worse. It was a critical turning point in the fight for civil rights.

'One of the things that we wanted to do was really talk about, or give an Iowa perspective,” said Michael Kates, executive director of the museum. 'There are a number of people who were part of the civil rights movement, white or black. You had the Freedom Summer, and you have all sorts of civil rights workers. We wanted to do something to capture how Iowa contributed to the civil rights movement.

'And we're still doing it, on a small scale,” said Kates, who called the veto frustrating. 'Considering we're a museum that represents the history and culture of Iowa, this is something that we really thought we should take to the state and see if they'd be interested in funding it.”

Yes, it's true the museum's funding was just one line-item among many in the bill Branstad vetoed, also including millions for soil and water conservation programs, and for the Resource Enhancement And Protection, or REAP, program. In his veto message, Branstad said 'While there are items in this bill that I support, and in some instances recommended,” vetoing the whole bill is fiscally responsible. The state can't afford it, he says, even with reserves full and a $600 million ending balance.

But the truth is, Branstad has line-item veto authority, a great power that comes with considerable responsibility. And that's a responsibility to evaluate each line-item on its own merits. He could have done that on SF 2363, which passed the Senate on a party-line 26-22 vote but passed the Republican-controlled House 97-0. The governor could have signed what he supports and vetoed what he opposes.

Instead, he vetoed the whole bill to avoid making the tough, politically sensitive choices and to keep his fingerprints off any individual appropriations. Which line-items did he support or oppose? We can only guess.

It's lousy governing, wrapped in the flag of fiscal responsibility. But Branstad can't veto a bill and not own that veto's individual effects.

Surely I'm not suggesting that Branstad doesn't care about civil rights. No, but this is the same governor who, on his first day back in office, issued an executive order making it all but impossible for felons who have served their sentences to get their voting rights back. In a state where blacks make up 3.2 percent of the general population and 17 percent of the prison population, and where blacks are eight times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, that's a civil rights issue.

The NAACP thinks so, and pressured the governor to make changes to the voting rights restoration process. Branstad, to his credit, did make minor alterations. Offenders no longer have to provide a credit report, for instance.

Even with those changes, Branstad's office has restored rights to just 40 people in three years among thousands who have completed sentences.

That's a big switch from Gov. Tom Vilsack and Gov. Chet Culver, who allowed automatic restoration of voting rights. Some felons confused by the change who registered to vote or who voted were then swept up in Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz's dragnet operation to prove the existence of rampant 'voter fraud.” Schultz hoped to use the evidence to get voter I.D. legislation and other measures that are the dressed-up distant cousins of the sort of barriers Freedom Riders sought to break.

And if the state can't afford $300,000, why is it that the governor and his staff have felt the need to spend $525,000, and counting, on a lawsuit spawned by Branstad's push to drive a workers' compensation commissioner from his legally held office?

Commissioner Chris Godfrey was appointed to a six-year term by Culver in 2009. In December 2010, before he even took office, Branstad demanded that Godfrey resign. He refused, so the Branstad administration cut his salary from $112,000 to $73,000, the lowest allowed by law.

Branstad gets to appoint hundreds of positions. But Iowa law leaves a few offices out of easy reach to temper the pace of political appointments. But Branstad couldn't wait until 2015 to get a more pro-business commissioner into Godfrey's chair.

So Godfrey sued Branstad and other executive branch staff, and the Iowa Supreme Court recently ruled that Godfrey's claims against those individuals can move forward. Branstad's state-funded private lawyer, George LaMarca, is billing taxpayers at $325 per hour, so, without a settlement, the bills will keep rolling in and piling up.

Godfrey is gay, so his lawsuit also charges discrimination. I think cronyism is a more likely motive for this saga, but we'll let the jury decide.

Speaking of gay rights, the major civil rights struggle of the current time, Branstad still opposes legal same-sex marriages. And when crusaders against marriage equality targeted Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of it, including judges who Branstad appointed, the governor refused to take a public stand. He didn't want to get involved.

It's true that the governor has hardly been a zealous crusader against marriage equality. But standing quietly, safely on the sidelines at a critical, historic moment, when the fate of marriage rights were hanging in the balance, is hardly much of a legacy. If someone ever does an oral history of that civil rights movement in Iowa, the governor's chapter can be called 'The Sound of Silence.”

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com