Iowa lawmakers defend closed door budget sessions

DES MOINES - “We're making progress” if the oft-repeated mantra of leaders of the Iowa Legislature as they head into a third week of overtime in a game of legislative chicken.

You'll have to take their word because the progress, if there is any, isn't happening in public.

That's not a problem, according to Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, and House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, who defend the closed door meetings where lawmakers are hammering out the details of a $6.244 billion general fund budget.

“I don't think they are taking official action,” Gronstal said when questioned about the meeting between lawmakers he called “the principals.”

Typically those are the chairs of appropriations subcommittees who sit on conference committees that negotiate away the differences between House and Senate budgets.

They're meeting to make sure they understand each other's proposals, Paulsen said. When they get an agreement, they will take it to a conference committee, where the public will have an opportunity to observe the formal approval of the compromise.

“No decisions are being made until it goes to the conference committee,” Gronstal said. “That's the body that makes the decision. Not the two chairs.”

That's the same reasoning local government officials have used to justify closed-door meetings. Those meetings have been banned by the legislators who determined public meeting laws should not apply to them.

That frustrates Rep. Dave Jacoby, D-Coralville, a former city council member who finds irony in legislators requiring local governments to operate under open meetings law that don't apply to the Legislature.

“We point fingers at local government - and some needed their shins kicked, but we tell other people what to do and we don't come close to following it ourselves,” Jacoby said. He said he refused to vote for a public information bill this session because it didn't apply to the Legislature.

Rep. Vicki Lensing, D-Iowa City, who worked on that bill for at least five sessions, thinks there's some legislative business that justifiably can be done in private.

“It's frustrating that the last couple of years this is the way we've done government, that we can't resolve things in open debate on the floor,” Lensing said. However, at this point in the session lawmakers are dealing with sensitive issues. “I don't know if you can make those decisions in front of a crowd.”

That's “antithetical to the public interest,” said Kathleen Richardson, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.

“I do think that it is ironic that legislators are conducting public business behind closed doors just a few days after passing a groundbreaking access law by an overwhelming margin,” Richardson said. “Unfortunately, this is a recurring problem every year at this time.” The process, she said, even leaves lawmakers out of the loop.

Rep. Cindy Winckler, D-Davenport, a member of the House Education Appropriations Committee and the conference committee on education appropriations, has been actively engaged in budget discussions since the beginning of the session. However, she wasn't privy to an agreement reached this week. She was left to tell reporters that “based on what I've been told” it was a good deal.

Sen. Brian Schoenjahn, D-Arlington, was one of two Education Appropriations Subcommittee chairmen who negotiated that agreement. However, he declined to provide specifics - even as he was doing a line-by-line review of the agreement. He told reporters to wait for the conference committee report.

Rep. Dave Heaton, R-Mount Pleasant, who is negotiation a massive health and human services budget, took a similar tack Thursday.

“I'd just as soon not get into the details of our negotiations,” Heaton told reporters. “I know there are a lot of people wondering what the heck is going on. When we find an agreement, we'll sit in a conference and people can see exactly what we've done.”

Of course, at that time, the public won't have a voice in the discussion. Only conference committee members can speak at those meetings.

In the meantime, Gronstal said, people are offering their opinions.

“A lot of people are communicating with us saying, ‘Don't throw this overboard' and, ‘Gee, if you had to throw something overboard it might be that,'” he said.