Too Many Secrets

An assault on the freedom of information

On December 7th I read a commentary in the Des Moines magazine City View penned by Randy Evans. Randy is a bit of a hero to me. He is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and former editor of the Des Moines Register.

I wrote previously about how Randy’s column impacted me in this post — Though the Heavens Fall — and I continue to carry his Stray Thoughts essay with me in my research notebook. Here is an excerpt from that City View commentary:

Back in early December I was in The Slow Down Coffee Co. in Des Moines and picked up a copy of the December 2024 edition of Cityview Magazine. I read the entire thing, but I have kept one essay with me since that day. In fact, I tore it out and pasted it into one of my writing notebooks. It was an essay entitled More access to government, not more secrecy, is needed…

… Randy also has a Substack – Stray Thoughts – and you can also read some of the thoughts in his Cityview essay in a post there – Government is frittering away public trust with private, members-only meetings.

Randy lays out, in his essay and his Substack post, a compelling case for how the no-public-input secrecy contagion has infected local government in Iowa as well. Orange City, Iowa has its sequential 2x2 secret meetings. The Des Moines City Council utilized a tactic similar to the Orange City 2x2 meeting earlier in 2024 when they cancelled a public meeting regarding standard agreements for proposed economic development incentives. Instead, the council and City Manager Scott Sanders met in a series of private, no-quorum, sequential meetings without inviting the public or otherwise providing for public input.

The sub-headline for Randy’s piece in City View resonates with me, particularly at this time in our states and our nation — Government officials sometimes forget that government belongs to the people, not to the officials. I could not agree more Mr. Evans.

There are seemingly countless of examples of where this secrecy over transparency has become the norm these days, and not just a frequent occurrence. Laura Belin wrote about an extremely disconcerting example in her recent post — Brenna Bird hid the ball on major disability case. Now she's lying about it.

… Bird has often welcomed media coverage of her legal battles against Biden administration policies. Her office issued many press releases to announce new litigation or joint letters challenging the federal government.

But Bird’s office kept quiet about one case, which Iowa and sixteen other Republican-controlled states filed in the Northern District of Texas last September. Texas v. Becerra could prove catastrophic for Americans with disabilities. Not only are the plaintiffs seeking to vacate a federal rule prohibiting discrimination against disabled people in health care settings, they are also asking the court to declare a 1973 law known as Section 504 unconstitutional and unenforceable.

After reporters began asking questions about that lawsuit last week, Bird and her staff lied repeatedly about the scope of the case and the plaintiffs’ goals.

Attorney General Bird’s efforts to push Americans with disabilities back into the shadows of life is obviously much more malevolent and malicious than the Orange City Council’s shenanigans around the city’s backyard chicken ordinance. But there is a common theme here. When elected officials seek to make governmental decisions behind closed doors and even go to the extent of blinding the people to what is actually happening, be that through process or deception, they set aside the title of public servant and don the crown of autocrat.

I am so grateful to know there know that there are journalists and writers like Laura Belin and Randy Evans out there, digging up stories, bringing them into the light for all to see. They are heroic in their writing, which is why they are two of my heroes.

But I want to add one observation of my own, an observation that I have not heard from Laura or Randy, although I suspect they will agree. I have been doing this kind of work and writing for decades. But I have been writing this Substack for less than a year. And I have been on this quest, this sojourn, for less than two years.

One thing that I have noticed these last two years, something different from the years and decades of doing this work over the course of my life, is that a strange governmental commitment to opacity has overtaken every governmental sub-division that I engage with. Every single one.

There is no longer even a shred of commitment to transparency in government, not around me anyway. And that commitment has been replaced with an absolute disdain for public information and opposition to the desire of private, rank-and-file, frontline citizens to participate in any government decision-making process whatsoever.

I have seen this across every single story or issue that I have researched these last 18 months — cities, counties, regional agencies, universities, state agencies, legislators and the legislative bodies in which they serve as well as state agency heads, federal agencies and their leaders, governors, members of Congress… ad infinitum. Governor Reynolds’ Office, Director Kayla Lyon at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources along with every staff person at her agency that I have dealt with, the Iowa Utilities Commission, the City of Iowa City, Fayette County, Buchanan County, Cerro Gordo County, Franklin County, the Iowa General Assembly… the list just gets depressing after a while.

I have not worked on one story, nor researched any issue, in which I have sought to engage any governmental sub-division or agency to acquire public information and not been greeted by resistance. Sometimes and in some places, I have been able to overcome that resistance. I guess that means that some government entities are better than others, but I do not really think so. They all start in the same place and with the same plan, obfuscation — tell me they don’t have what I’m asking for, or that they are not certain they can give it to me, ask me why I want the information, etc. That last one really irks me, like you won’t try to run me off if I can tell you I have a good-enough reason? Because I know that is not true. No matter the reason one gives, the question of why you want something is just a prelude to saying no, you’re not worthy.

First, before I close, I have researched this in my own notes, and I know it to be true. One might argue that perhaps these folks just don’t like me, and that could be, but objectively I do not believe that is an adequate explanation. We must not accept this. We can do better than this, we must do better.

We will never find solutions to the stern challenges we face in our communities, our states and our nation if we are kept in the dark. Knowing what those stern challenges are and how they came to be is crucial to find a path forward, a path to overcome.

And second, please, after you have read this let me know your thoughts on this. I know what I know. And I know this is happening. But if I cannot convince others, or if others do not see the same thing happening around them it will be a much greater challenge for me and for us all.

Democracy really does die in darkness.

Therefore, be a light shining into dark places.

And, let justice be done though the heavens fall.

John Crabtree

[photo credit, John Crabtree]