Religious education at statehouse an example of what the public doesn’t know

One perk enjoyed by state lawmakers is the ability to reserve private meeting rooms in the Capitol — also used for official legislative business — for personal use. The privilege is a long-held legislative tradition.

But despite the fact that the Capitol space is taxpayer funded and public servants are often in attendance, there is little to no transparency or public oversight surrounding who is using the rooms and for what.

Creative Commons photo by TRiver via Flick

The practice came to light last week when The Iowa Independent was the first to report on the screening of a Focus on the Family–produced educational DVD series in a room designated for use by Iowa senators. There was no notice provided by the state that the event was taking place, and upon further investigation, the few rules in place that govern the use of these meeting rooms were found to be vaguely written with no guidelines to larger questions relating to appropriate use of Capitol resources.

Although meetings held for official business must be posted on the numerous Capitol calendars published by the state, non-official meetings are considered “private,” and often the public is never aware that they exist.

“They aren’t closed, but there is this whole notion of practical obscurity. They are open, but they are not open at the same time,” said J.H. Snider, president of iSolon, a nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., and a national expert on e-democracy issues.

Snider said the process needs sunlight because it is important that the public know what transactions are going on between legislators and the groups that are granted access to the meeting rooms. In the case of the Focus on the Family education series, the Capitol rooms were reserved first by state Sen. Nancy Boettger, R-Harlan, and then by state Rep. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, on behalf of the Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC).

Although the political arm of IFPC provided its supporters notice of the meeting, to date no meetings scheduled for this purpose have appeared on calendars intended for the general public — including a listing of social events scheduled for legislators, published by the Iowa House.

“These are very valuable perks,” Snider said. “There is no money changing hands — so in that sense it doesn’t appear [to be valuable] — but it is an in-kind contribution, a gift, like free travel or something like that. It’s valuable, but it’s also very confusing because the exchange goes in the opposite way. That is, interest groups are usually providing something to legislators, but this exchange is in the opposite direction. It’s an unconventional type of influence.”

Michael Marshall, secretary of the Iowa Senate, explained in an e-mail to The Iowa Independent that Senate Rule 54 “places upon me the responsibility to ‘have control of all rooms assigned for the use of the senate.’ By traditional senate practice, only senators may reserve senate rooms, either for legislative business or for the use of an outside group. A senator’s ‘sponsorship’ of an outside group is entirely left to his or her discretion.” He added that “private meetings, whether involving senators or only outside groups, are kept private.”

The Iowa Independent has filed an open records request for information relating to any and all “private” meetings scheduled on behalf of legislators for personal or non-governmental use with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate. The request is currently being processed by the senate. The house has yet to respond.

Both Democratic and Republican senate leadership did not respond to requests for comment.

“The Iowa Capitol is a public facility and the public should know who is using it — whether rooms are being used for someone’s birthday party or the showing of religious videos,” said Kathleen Richardson, executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. “Irrespective of whether it is appropriate for Focus on the Family to be using government facilities to show its programming, the public should know what is going on so that people can decide for themselves whether it is appropriate.”

Senate rules do require Marshall to have “control of all rooms assigned for use in the senate,” but no member of senate leadership or the secretary’s office produced written guidelines pertaining to appropriate use when asked specifically for such documents. When questioned, Marshall asserted that appropriate use was left to the discretion of the individual lawmaker making the room reservation request. Upon being presented with scenarios that presented obvious ethical and/or legal conflicts — such as a campaign fundraising events or a donor receptions — Marshall said he had “neglect[ed] to note the senator’s exercise of discretion must also be lawful.”

Charlie Smithson, director and legal counsel for the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board, indicated that the only time his office would have a role in these types of events would be when there is a “session function,” when all 150 legislators are invited to attend an event.

John Wonderlich, policy director for the Sunlight Foundation, said Iowa is far from alone in its current practice of keeping certain meetings off the public radar.

“I think it is pretty typical for legislators to have common space that members can reserve for private use,” he said. “That private use could be — well, it’s hard to break into what that private use could be because it could be politically relevant. … To require disclosure for that type of thing could be very valuable, but it would also be difficult to crack.”

While acknowledging that there are “compelling reasons for the public’s business to be conducted in public,” Wonderlich also noted that he could see some circumstances where it would be in the public’s best interest for certain meetings to remain private.

“If I was a senator and I wanted to have a meeting with 10 whistle-blowers and my office wasn’t big enough for the group, then it would be appropriate use of that space to meet with them and not disclose it because of the harm that could cause the whistle-blowers,” he said. “Also, if a large group of constituents was coming in and they wanted their privacy to be protected. This is the type of a situation where the privacy of a constituent and the desire to have a public official’s business happen in public can come into conflict.”

Reservation of rooms, he said, is an area where a state’s office of ethics or an ethics board should “keep close watch” due to the concern that things might be happening for personal or political gain while utilizing official resources.

Snider, who has extensively studied the use of common government space, believes that watchful eyes are important, but don’t go far enough in protecting the public’s interest.

“This is one of those dark places,” Snider said. “I’ve been trying to explain that these are tangible perks that [legislators] give out, and I think it has some perverse effects. I don’t think it’s going to have a perverse effect on an advocacy or interest group, except that they will be less likely to oppose a particular member that can give them this nice perk. But, for somebody that is supposed to really be an objective source of information, it does hint at some hidden bias in the system. I think if you disclose you can diminish that.”

Although only those who know about and attend these “private” meetings can attest to exactly what happens, Snider said those he’s attended in Washington, D.C. often occur during breakfast or lunch hours and nearly always involve food to entice over-worked and under-paid congressional staff members to drop in. The staff members benefit from the free meal while they receive information from the hosting group. The hosting groups, he said, also benefit because those who fund them care a great deal about influencing policy makers. Members of the press perceived as friendly to the exchange — often specialty trade press members — will sometimes be in attendance as well to further popularize ideas from the meeting or the overall influence of the group hosting the meeting.

“The downside [of publicizing the meetings] would be that the think-tanks and other groups would be less likely to have access, and then you could argue that they would lose funding and that aides would have less knowledge,” Snider said. “That’s one of the problems with transparency: You don’t get people to do things that they otherwise would.”

But that shouldn’t stop the public from demanding the meetings be disclosed.

“It’s too corrupting an influence, too valuable a perk, and nobody really knows or understands the logic behind it and what it really means,” Snider said.

An Iowa Capitol staffer with direct knowledge of such events who would only speak on the condition of anonymity said a wide assortment of events take place in the statehouse that are never provided public notice. Some examples include Bible study groups, prayer meetings, presentations by outside groups seeking to influence policy, press conferences by non-government agencies and social events such as receptions to honor a long-time lawmaker or offer well wishes upon a retirement.

In addition to the rooms under the purview of the House and Senate, there are also Judiciary rooms and other spaces in the Capitol that can, and are, utilized by non-governmental entities.

Snider believes that legislative bodies should provide full disclosure on a Web site that can provide those who sign-up with automatic alerts based on specific topics or subjects.

“I think it is inexcusable that we don’t know how legislators are using this very valuable resource, which is their ability to give access to groups,” he said. “People are paying for building relationships and access. When the legislators are doing this, interest groups and lobbyists — not necessarily individual lobbyists but certainly trade association folks — are generating something they can show to their members and it’s like cash in the bank. The public deserves to know about these transactions. Publicize it, then let the chips fall where they may.”