State board members question process for eliminating panels

DES MOINES — When Gov. Kim Reynolds this year proposed a 1,500-page bill to overhaul and reorganize state government, hours and hours of meetings and hearings were spent on the suggested changes to the state’s agencies and departments — but one little-discussed provision calling for a review of Iowa’s boards and commissions has set off concerns over transparency.

The law called for convening a committee to review the number of state administrative boards and commissions in Iowa, which work on regulations and licensing for areas like education, agriculture, the environment and other professions and industries.

After the committee last month announced its preliminary recommendations to cut or consolidate more than 100 boards, dozens of members of those boards and others expressed concern during a public hearing about the effects the cuts could have on the services and opportunities offered to Iowans — including some who said they were never asked for input before their own board was put on the chopping block.

The committee will announce its final recommendations in a meeting Monday. The recommendations would need to be approved by the Iowa Legislature and then signed into law by Reynolds before taking effect.

Who is on the committee?

The committee’s membership includes several members appointed by Reynolds, as well as two legislators from each party selected by party leaders to serve as non-voting members.

Kraig Paulsen, the head of Iowa’s Department of Management, is the chair and has led the process. Other members are Jacob Nicholson, chief operating officer for Reynolds; Nate Ristow, the state administrative rules coordinator; Larry Johnson, the director of the Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing; David Faith, a deputy attorney general; and Barbara Sloniker, the board’s public member and executive director of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce.

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Paulsen said cutting down on the number of boards and commissions in Iowa’s government would rein in the sprawling board structure and streamline the benefits for Iowans they offer.

Who did members contact before making recommendations?

When formulating the recommendations, the six-member committee split into two-member subcommittees that each handled different areas of the expertise, including licensing and medicine. Those two-member subcommittees met privately to review the boards before the committee made its initial recommendations, Paulsen said.

Paulsen said at a recent meeting he had conversations with people on many of the boards he reviewed during the subcommittee process, but he said he could not confirm whether the other members of the committee reached out on their assigned boards.

"I know I did (reach out to board members)," he told reporters after a Sept. 6 public hearing on the recommendations. "And I’m quite confident the others did as well, but I don’t know whether these individual people were reached out to by somebody in particular."

But some board chairs said neither they or anyone on their board received any contact from the committee until their board was already recommended for elimination.

Lynne Rush, chair of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Advisory Board, said she received no communication before being told, after the committee announced its recommendations, by a Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing employee that her board was marked for elimination. Rush said she thinks the decision was made arbitrarily and without proper input.

“How do you evaluate efficiency and effectiveness if you don’t contact those boards?” she asked. “What’s your criteria that you’re using to evaluate those boards if you don’t get input from them?”

Rush was not alone. Kerry Anne Dixon, a member of the state Elevator Safety Board, and Brenda Ellefson, the chair of Iowa’s Board of Examiners of Shorthand Reporters, both said nobody on their boards, which are recommended for elimination, received any communication beforehand from the committee.

Rush said she would continue to lobby for the board to stay intact as the recommendations go through the lawmaking process.

The Department of Management did not respond to a request for comment asking which boards the committee members contacted in its review process.

The Gazette-Lee Des Moines Bureau reached out to more than 20 individuals on more than a dozen boards and commissions that could be eliminated or consolidated, and received only a handful of responses.

Some emails seeking comment were referred to the Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing. The department’s spokesperson, Diane McCool, said the review process was “intentionally structured to allow public input.”

“Additionally, the committee's final recommendation is just that, a recommendation to the Governor and Legislature,” McCool said in a statement. “If a bill is filed based on the recommendation, there will be additional opportunities for the public to provide input.”

The board solicited feedback from at least some commissions by way of a Google form obtained by The Gazette-Lee bureau. The form included dozens of questions about the board’s mission and size, whether it oversees licensing or rulemaking authorities, and how much cost is associated with running the board.

David Walker, the chair of the Iowa Uniform Law Commission, said Michael Boal — a former Reynolds staffer who now is temporarily working with the Department of Management on the review process — reached out to him with the questionnaire in June, and he responded. Walker then learned his commission was recommended to be eliminated once the committee announced its recommendations.

The commission works to ensure laws around financial institutions, family court and a litany of other areas are uniform across state lines so entities can expect the same regulations regardless of which state they’re operating in.

“I don’t think there was real understanding of what commissioners do and the hours that we invest,” he said. “...There wasn’t a rationale other than someone spoke and said, ‘Well, these duties can be transferred to the Legislative Services Agency.’ And … I believe we have quite different roles.”

Transparency concerns

Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, noted that while the state’s open records law allows the two-member review teams to meet behind closed doors like they did, “nothing in the law prevents officials from opening the meetings to the public to observe the discussions.”

“The spirit of the public meetings law is to help citizens understand the basis and rationale for the decisions the task force eventually makes,” he said. “That does not occur when the public is not permitted to attend these regular meetings.”

State Sen. Janice Weiner, a Democrat from Iowa City who serves as a non-voting member of the committee, said she was concerned about a lack of public input early in the process, when board members made their initial recommendations to shave down the number of state committees.

She said the public hearing held Sept. 6 was a helpful start to hear from the affected boards, but she wanted to make sure the committee considered the input from all affected boards, including board members who did not speak at the hearing.

“I think that we need to take a very close look at the finances, essentially a fiscal note, and what the rubrics, if any were, for examining these,” she said. “...I think it’s a much needed process to do a review, we just have to make sure that we do it in the right way, so folks in important commissions and boards aren’t cut out.”

In an emailed statement after a September meeting of the committee, Weiner said Reynolds had created an unaccountable committee and set an arbitrary timeline.

“It’s clear to me that the goal of this sham process is to increase power for the governor — not Iowans,” Weiner said.

Reynolds, Republicans approve of process

A spokesperson for Reynolds said in an emailed statement that reviewing the boards will ensure that Iowans are being served appropriately and the state government is operating efficiently. He noted the committee has received more than 1,000 public written comments and heard from dozens of people at the Sept. 6 public hearing.

“The Boards and Commissions Review Committee’s duty is to simply provide a recommendation to the governor and the legislature,” said Kollin Crompton, Reynolds’ spokesperson. “Any proposed changes will go through the legislative process just as every other bill does; where Iowans’ voices will be heard through their elected representatives.”

Republican leaders in the Iowa Legislature expressed confidence in the process and said they do not share transparency concerns.

Iowa Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver and Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley, leaders of their respective chambers in the Republican-majority Legislature, both also noted that any proposal made by the review panel also will have to go through the legislation process, which includes at least one hearing that allows for public input.

“Anything that we’re going to do legislatively is going to go through the entire legislative process, plus multiple hearings and months of constituents being able to weigh in,” Whitver said. “So (I’m) completely comfortable with the transparency of this process.”

Grassley, too, said the legislative process includes other chances for public input.

“Obviously the Legislature is going to weigh in at some point, and I think we have a pretty good track record of keeping a transparent process. … So I don’t see that as being a concern. There’s going to be ample opportunity” for public input," he said.