Mr. Iowa comes to town

From Ackley to Zwingle, probably no Iowan knows more about Iowa than Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.

Randy came to Storm Lake Monday to speak to the Hy-Noon Kiwanis Club. He talked about the need for honest and open government at every level in the state in order that the citizens may have trust in their elected officials.

He noted that while most government agencies comply with Iowa’s open meetings and public records laws, there can be problems. For example, he told Kiwanians that last year the Iowa FOI Council filed suit against the city of Davenport after council members crafted a secret separation agreement that gave three outgoing city employees a settlement worth nearly $2 million. The council never took a vote on the matter and withheld that information from the public for months. The action sparked outrage by the Iowa Legislature and a state investigation.

Similarly, the FOI Council took legal action against the Des Moines school board after  the superintendent was released in 2022 with a secret $400,000 golden parachute. The action was approved by the school board in a two-minute session with no discussion.

School districts in Centerville and Bettendorf were both sued in 2023 and lost in court over illegal secret meetings.

And the FOI Council intervened in 2023 after Iowa City police for two months withheld the name of a prominent resident who caused a deadly car crash with a pedestrian, while drivers in other crashes were identified immediately.

The  FOI Council was formed 47 years ago by newspapers, broadcasters, educators and public citizens devoted to open government and the First Amendment. Iowa’s council is the oldest such statewide organization in the nation. The Storm Lake Times Pilot is a member, and managing editor Tom Cullen served as president of the Iowa FOI Council in 2020.

RANDY’S KNOWLEDGE about the Hawkeye State comes from his lifelong career as an Iowa newspaperman. At age 16 he began working for his hometown newspaper, the Bloomfield Democrat. After graduating from the University of Iowa, he spent two years as editor of the Albia Union-Republican and Monroe County News, weekly newspapers in Albia.

Then Randy began a 40-year career at The Des Moines Register, where he moved up the ranks from reporter to various editing roles supervising news coverage of the entire state, including state editor, metro editor, news editor and assistant managing editor. He was editor of the Register’s opinion pages during his final four years before retiring in 2014. In 2015 he was named executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.

Randy writes a weekly column about Iowa government and politics that is published in more than a dozen Iowa newspapers, including the Times Pilot.

Randy has testified before committees of the Iowa Legislature on government transparency issues and speaks regularly before the Iowa Public Information Board, a state agency which oversees issues involving public meetings and open records.

Randy has visited Storm Lake before. Heck, he’s probably visited every town in the state! During his last visit here, about seven years ago, he was invited to speak about newspapers to the third grade class at St. Mary’s School. One boy asked him how many stories were in the Register. “Well, it all depends,” Randy explained. “Some days there are many news events and we may have a lot of ads so that day’s paper might be bigger than other days,” he told the boy. “No,” the boy replied, “how many stories are in the Register building?” Randy and the Kiwanians Monday got a good chuckle from that. (For the record, there are 14 stories in the historic old Register and Tribune building, which was converted to luxury apartments in 2017 after the Register moved in 2013 to new quarters a few blocks away.)

Randy and his wife Susan are parents of two grown daughters and live in Des Moines. We were delighted to welcome Randy back to Storm Lake as he told us about his work to keep Iowans informed about our government.