Why decorahnews.com has filed an Open Meetings Law complaint

The chair of Decorah's Planning and Zoning Commission, Benji NIchols, makes an accurate point in his Letter to the Editor about citizen involvement in local government.

"Very few people go to public meetings," he notes--which is true.  Which is why it's so important for news reporters to attend public meetings on behalf of the public.

However, they can't do that if they don't know about those meetings.  Local governments in this area do a good job of sending out agendas and notices of governmental meetings.  decorahnews.com posts news stories in advance of those meetings, in case the public wants to attend.

But that all breaks down if governmental officials try to skirt compliance with Iowa's Open Meetings Law.  There's no other possible way to describe what happened with January 13th's City Personnel Committee meeting.  Unlike all other city government meetings, where agendas are e-mailed to all local news media, the agenda for this meeting was only posted on the bulletin board at City Hall--in hopes that no one would show up for the meeting.  That's because city officials knew in advance that discussing whether to reduce the paid staff levels of the fire department would be hugely controversial.

Here's the crux of our complaint to the State of Iowa: "The January 13th meeting notice--for a meeting which discussed possible staffing cuts to the Decorah Fire Department--was intentionally not sent to the local news media in an effort to avoid having the public learn of such conversations."

City officials claim the Personnel Committee agenda was handled in the same way all other agendas are handled, saying it was "what we typically do with committee meetings." 

Linked to this news story is the agenda local news media received for the city's Properties Committee meeting--held four days after the Personnel Committee meeting, but nowhere near as controversial.  Local reporters received that agenda because state law says, "Reasonable notice shall include advising the news media who have filed a request for notice with the governmental body."  That's what was done on January 17th--but not on January 13th.