The Des Moines Register. June 23, 2015
Expand, strengthen whistle-blower law
Ten years ago, an Iowa Workforce Development budget analyst named Kelly Taylor alerted state auditors to questionable - and, as it turned out, illegal - salaries and bonuses paid out at a publicly funded job-training program called the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium.
At the time, Taylor was a 25-year state employee but was afraid of losing his job for blowing the whistle - and with good reason. His boss, who would later be fired by the governor, had ordered Taylor to drop his own inquiries into the matter and retaliated against him by excluding him from subsequent meetings about CIETC.
“I’ve been blacklisted,” Taylor said at the time. “I don’t want to lose my job. And I worry about retaliation. I have a disabled wife and my income is all that we’ve got.”
Although Taylor’s concerns proved to be well founded and several individuals were either fired or sent to prison for their role in the CIETC scandal, the case highlighted the need to enact protections for government whistle-blowers. In response, the Iowa Legislature passed a law requiring the state’s Office of Ombudsman to investigate allegations of retaliation against government workers who have reported wrongdoing.
Unfortunately, the law they crafted provides virtually no meaningful job protection for whistle-blowers. And the one benefit that it does provide - the promise of an independent investigation by the state ombudsman - is offered only to a narrow subset of Iowa’s public employees. In fact, Kelly Taylor himself couldn’t benefit from the law he helped prompt.
As the Register’s Jason Clayworth reported last week, the 2006 law doesn’t apply to city, county and school district employees. It also excludes all state union workers, which Taylor was, as well as all state employees working under the merit system.
The upshot of this is that only 10 percent of the state’s executive branch workforce is guaranteed an independent investigation into a claim of retaliation. Even then, other hurdles must be cleared before an investigation can be launched.
For example, if a worker can’t show evidence that the whistle-blowing led to subsequent actions taken against him or her, or if the worker fails to file a complaint with the ombudsman within 30 days of those actions, the ombudsman is barred from investigating the matters. Given the manner in which many public agencies now block requests for records, it could take months for a worker to collect evidence of retaliation, by which time the 30-day window for filing a complaint will have closed.
In the nine years since the law was enacted, the ombudsman has received 155 complaints from whistle-blowers. Of those complainants, 52 have alleged they suffered, or were threatened with, some sort of retaliation for reporting wrongdoing. The ombudsman has not been able to investigate a single one of those complaints of retaliation because none of them have fallen within the narrow parameters crafted by state legislators.
Of course, workers covered by collective-bargaining agreements have always been able to take their grievances to their union, and all whistle-blowers retain the option of hiring a lawyer and litigating the matter in civil court. But how many public employees have the financial resources to pursue such a course of action? Retaliation can include the loss of employment, reductions in pay, or the mere threat of a demotion or dismissal. Knowing that, how many government workers are going to step forward and point to wrongdoing by their bosses?
Iowa’s whistle-blower law needs to do more than spell out the process by which complaints of retaliation are investigated. It needs to offer enough protection so that workers who fear for their livelihood and their ability to provide for their families will actually feel encouraged to come forward and voice their complaints.
As things stand now, the law is so narrowly drawn and so painfully inadequate that it’s likely viewed by many workers as a clear sign that Iowa’s whistle-blowers are undeserving of job protection. In that sense, the current law is not merely ineffective, it’s counter-productive.
The whistle-blower law needs to be rewritten so that, at a minimum, the Office of Ombudsman can investigate complaints of retaliation filed by any state and local government employee in Iowa. The ombudsman has the power to issue subpoenas, and is well equipped to investigate not only these claims of retaliation, but also the underlying issues that prompted the whistle-blowing complaints.
Without meaningful changes in the law, Iowa’s whistle-blowers will continue to file complaints of retaliation only to find that their state ombudsman is powerless to investigate. At the same time, many government workers who know of wrongdoing by their superiors will never become whistle-blowers, choosing instead to remain silent.
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Quad-City Times. June 23, 2015
Justices put activist governor in his place
Iowans concerned about activist judges just got schooled about activist governors.
The Iowa Supreme Court struck down Iowa’s administrative ban on online prescriptions of abortion-inducing drugs.
The ban was enacted by an Iowa Board of Medicine, stacked by Gov. Terry Branstad with anti-abortion appointees he obviously recruited to stop this practice.
Iowa was among the first states to allow these prescriptions to be offered through online - not in-person - consultation. Planned Parenthood introduced the system to serve Iowa women with limited access to reproductive health services.
When Branstad’s appointees to the Iowa Board of Medicine outlawed the practice, Planned Parenthood of Iowa filed suit, claiming the selective ban was aimed squarely at discriminating against women, the only gender that would seek this prescription.
The Board of Medicine never discussed other applications of telemedicine. Its ban focused only on prescriptions of abortion-inducing drugs.
The Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling agreed with standards from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists affirming the practice safe. The court ruled: “In their view, the medically necessary information a physician needs to determine whether to proceed with a medication abortion is contained in the patient’s history, blood work, vital signs, and ultrasound images - which can be accessed by reviewing the patient’s records remotely or in person.”
Further, the court said Branstad’s board, “imposes some burdens that would not otherwise exist,” for women seeking these services.
“The board appears to hold abortion to a different medical standard than other procedures.”
In this ruling, like the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2009 opinion affirming gay marriage, the court did not make law. It upheld Iowa’s constitutional protections against laws - or board policies - that squarely discriminate against one class of people.
Iowa’s gay marriage ban singled out homosexuals. Iowa’s Board of Medicine ban singled out a service provided only to women.
Branstad’s board-stacking gambit now has backfired. It resulted in strong, constitutional case law that certainly will be used to attack similar anti-abortion initiatives elsewhere. An analysis by National Law Review published Monday said the Iowa ruling will “strengthen” challenges to those laws in 16 other states that have outlawed telemedicine for reproductive services.
“Iowa is the first state supreme court to find a physical presence law unconstitutional. Since the decision relied in part on federal constitutional law, it can and likely will lead to challenges to other states’ bans on prescription of abortion-inducing drugs via telemedicine. Such challenges will be strengthened by the Iowa Supreme Court’s conclusion that there was no evidence that the physical presence of a doctor is medically necessary.”
Once again, thank Iowa’s justices for putting constitutional principles above political games.
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Sioux City Journal. June 24, 2015
Branstad should accept compromise on school funding
We understand Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s concern about using one-time, surplus dollars to help fund K-12 public schools in the next fiscal year. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be recommended state budget practice.
Still, because protracted debate about school funding in the just-concluded legislative session left local school district leaders in an already unordinary position with respect to planning for the new school year, we urge Branstad not to complicate their lives further by vetoing this one-time appropriation.
Branstad must make a decision by July 6.
On June 1, some seven weeks after the April 15 date by which local school districts must certify budgets for the next school year, the split-control Legislature agreed to a 1.25 percent increase in state aid, plus a one-time investment of an additional $55 million.
“I don’t like the idea of one-time money,” Branstad said following the session. “The problem with one-time money is you really can’t use it for salaries because it’s not going to be there the next year.” He makes a good point. In response, local school districts should exercise caution in budgeting these one-time funds. Ideally, one-time dollars should be used for one-time purchases - like textbooks, for example.
The total amount of one-time money isn’t unreasonable and the state can afford it. Plus, K-12 public school districts have begun to plan on the money.
For the sake of local superintendents and boards of education across the state who await a final decision by state government on funding for the looming new academic year, we urge Branstad to accept the hard-fought compromise reached by Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature and provide closure to this year’s funding drama.
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The Hawkeye (Burlington). June 25, 2015
Keep them open, governor
State law says, the Legislature says and the people of Iowa say to keep the mental-health facilities in southern Iowa open.
The guess here is Gov. Terry Branstad will use his line-item veto power to cancel !nancing of two mental-health facilities south of Interstate 80.
Not because it’s a good idea - it’s not and they’re needed - but because he decided when he made up his budget they weren’t needed.
The Iowa Legislature, those folks we elect to represent us, pushed back. Good for them. They allocated funding for the facilities in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda, despite the Des Moines-based governor’s declaration they’re too old and mental-health matters can be better served in Independence and Chariton, the latter being a town not far from where the governor grew up and a region where he has ownership in a couple of postal buildings.
The governor hasn’t signed the legislation yet. Too bad. He should.
The people of Iowa want these facilities to remain open. It shouldn’t be left to one person to decide for the taxpayingpublic
of Iowa they’re not necessary.
In southeast Iowa, it means jobs and help for the people of southeast Iowa who need the help.
The governor never has explained why the people of southeast and southwest Iowa weren’t deserving of that help while the people of northern Iowa were.
We’ve noted before how much it would cost law-enforcement to take patients to the northern Iowa facilities. We’ve noted the Mount Pleasant facility is minutes away from the state prison in Fort Madison - which the governor can’t seem to get opened, keeps giving up millions of our dollars and blames the process on a governor who hasn’t been in of!ce for nearly eight years. It’s not Chet Culver’s problem the prison isn’t opened, governor, it’s yours.
And, it should be noted, Iowa law requires four mental health institutions. The governor - a lawyer - evidently wants to ignore state law for his own good, and, it seems, his own ego.
He should sign the legislation passed by the people elected to represent us.
We’re guessing he won’t, but our fingers are crossed he does. And if he doesn’t, lawmakers owe it to us to override his veto.
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