Gina Messamer
Harvey Harrison
COUNCIL TO HONOR DES MOINES ACTIVIST AND ATTORNEY
WITH ‘FRIEND OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT’ AWARDS
Two Des Moines residents who have made important contributions to racial justice in the capital city will be recognized Wednesday, December 10, 2025, for their efforts to bring needed transparency to Des Moines Police Department practices.
Harvey Harrison, a retired Des Moines lawyer and founder of Just Voices, a nonprofit community activism organization, and Gina Messamer, a partner in the Parrish Kruidenier Law Firm and Harrison’s go-to legal advisor, will receive the Iowa FOI Council’s annual Friend of the First Amendment awards during the Council’s annual meeting.
Harrison and Messamer won an important victory for public transparency earlier this year with their lawsuit against the Des Moines Police Department over the department’s refusal to release use-of-force reports officers completed in 2020 following incidents in which police used force against suspects.
The records request was part of Just Voices’ efforts in the wake of George Floyd’s death to document and evaluate the actions of Des Moines officers when physical or deadly force is used against people suspected of criminal actions.
The City of Des Moines argued the use-of-force reports are personnel records and are, therefore, exempt from disclosure under the open records law. The Supreme Court sided with Harrison and Just Voices and ruled the reports detail the facts of what happened and are not evaluations of the officers’ job performance.
Just Voices has used Iowa’s public records law to gather data about racial disparities in traffic stops and arrests by Des Moines officers. The organization’s research has documented how black people are nearly three times more likely than whites to be stopped by police for the same offenses.
Because Iowa has no ban on racial profiling or pretextual stops by police, Harrison and Messamer have said racial bias in policing ends up as a key element in the higher rates of blacks being stopped by police and being ticketed or arrested.
DONORS CONTINUE TO HELP
BUILD FINANCIAL FOUNDATION
FOR IOWA FOI COUNCIL
This year is on track to be one of the very best financially in the Iowa FOI Council’s almost 50-year history, with donations topping $80,000.
Donors are our biggest revenue source by far, following by members’ dues and the sale of the 2025 edition of our Iowa Open Meetings, Open Records Handbook and our Open Records Open Minds t-shirts.
If you or your business or organization are not already members of the Council, we invite you to join — as a way of helping to ensure the Council’s respected voice in support of government transparency and accountability remains strong financially.
Dues for 2026 will remain at $790 for Sustaining Members; $345 for First Amendment members, and $100 for individuals. To join, just mail your check to Iowa FOI Council, P.O. Box 8002, Des Moines, IA 50301.
Donations of any size also can be made through our website, www.ifoic.org. Click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner.
If you are interested in an in-depth look at the Council’s finances, copies of our 2024 Form 990, our annual IRS report, are available at no charge. Send an email to IowaFOICouncil@gmail.com and we will happily email a copy to you.
WE’LL GLADLY SELL YOU
THE SHIRTS OFF OUR BACKS
If you are shopping for friends or relatives who believe in the importance of Iowa’s “sunshine” laws and government transparency, the Iowa FOI Council has a gift idea for you.
Our friends at RAYGUN, the wildly creative Midwest emporium, designed a t-shirt for the Council a few years ago. We still have a few shirts available, although some sizes are sold out. The price is $20. And that includes the cost of shipping.
Email your orders to IowaFOICouncil@gmail.com. Please include the size(s), quantities, and the address to which we should send your order. We are big believers in Iowa Nice, so we will gladly tuck an invoice in with your order and you can then pay upon arrival.
What a deal!
HIGHER FINES FOR VIOLATORS
IN AMENDED MEETINGS LAW
Members of state and local government boards who violate Iowa’s public meetings laws now face larger fines because of a law that took effective last July 1. The amendment to Iowa Code Chapter 21 received near-unanimous approval in both chambers of the Legislature, and the bill was signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds.
The changes increase the fines for each board member who violates the law to not more than $2,500, nor less than $500. If the violations knowingly occur, the fines increase to a maximum of not more than $12,500, nor less than $5,000.
The bill follows public outcry after people in Davenport learned that secret settlements had been reached with the city manager and two of her administrative assistants in the weeks after the collapse of an apartment building across the street from Davenport City Hall. City Manager Corri Spiegel was paid $1.6 million in return for her resignation and two administrative assistants to Spiegel received a combined $400,000 when they left their city jobs.
But those payments were not voted on in public meetings by the Davenport City Council until several weeks after the 2023 city election, more than a month after the three submitted their resignations and accepted the payments.
Spiegel’s job performance surrounding complaints about structural problems with the apartment building were one of the issues in the city elections that November. But her resignation was kept secret until after the city balloting.
Randy Evans, president of the Iowa FOI Council, testified before an oversight committee of the Iowa Legislature about the organization’s concerns about the Davenport City Council secrecy and lack of transparency before the election, when the resignations and payments were agreed to.
FOI LEADER CRITICIZES
DMPS SECRECY IN
OFFICIAL’S DEPARTURE
Randy Evans, president of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, criticized the secrecy surrounding the departure of Robert Lundin as the chief academic official of the Des Moines Public Schools.
Lundin was placed on paid administrative leave on October 6 for reasons that have never been made public. He submitted what school officials said was a voluntary resignation six weeks later.
Days after Lundin signed a resignation and separation agreement, the school board met in closed session, supposedly to “evaluate” his job performance. At the conclusion of that closed session, the board voted to accept his resignation, but the board decided to keep him on paid leave through June 30, 2026, when his contract expires.
That decision came without discussion and without any explanation for why an employee would continue to be paid after resigning.
You can read Evans’ full column here: https://open.substack.com/pub/revans2810/p/school-owes-explanation-for-this?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
FOI COUNCIL POINTS TO
LAWMAKER’S CONTRADICTION
WITH IOWA RECORDS LAW
At least one member of the Iowa House appears to live by the mantra “Do as I say, not as I do” when he demanded access to sensitive personal information the Legislature put off limits from inspection by government officials four years ago. The audacity of Representative Charley Thomson, a Charles City Republican who chairs the Iowa House Government Oversight Committee, surfaced earlier this year when he demanded records from a Des Moines nonprofit organization, the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice.
Thomson directed the organization turn over to him the names and addresses of its clients, its donors, and its members. He warned the civil rights group to “not discuss … or notify any person or entity that you have been directed to provide this information.”
The Iowa FOI Council pointed out to Iowans that Thomson’s demands go against Iowa law. That law, found in Chapter 22A of the Iowa Code, is titled, “Protection of Personal Information, Tax-Exempt Entities.” The statute, signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds, forbids state or local government officials from requiring a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization to hand over information that directly or indirectly identifies its members, supporters, volunteers, or donors.
The Iowa FOI Council’s views were expressed in the column found here: https://open.substack.com/pub/revans2810/p/a-lawmakers-blatant-overreach-as?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
GOVERNOR’S ‘PRIVILEGE’
CLAIM WOULD BE TROUBLING
PRECEDENT, COUNCIL WARNS
A case making its way through the Iowa Supreme Court has the potential to upend access to records in the possession of Iowa’s governors. Gov. Kim Reynolds has cited “executive privilege” for declining to make certain records available to requesters.
The rationale behind executive privilege involves the desire of a governor for confidentiality of her decision-making process. Governors want to be able to receive their staffs’ and advisers’ candid advice on sensitive matters under consideration without fear the advice might be made public.
Two lawsuits involve decisions already made. Both cases deal with the legal doctrine known as executive privilege and how far it extends, or does not extend, in preventing journalists or others from obtaining records from the governor’s office.
Reynolds brought the first case against The Des Moines Register over its attempts to obtain records about her embarrassing response while testifying in February before a congressional committee in Washington, D.C., when she was asked whether she considered Lutheran Services of Iowa to be engaged in money laundering, as Elon Musk had claimed.
In the second case, the ACLU of Iowa sued Reynolds on behalf of the group Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers over her refusal to provide copies of records pertaining to state officials’ decision blocking the Satanic Temple of Iowa from holding a public event at the Capitol in December 2024.
There has been little guidance from Iowa Supreme Court through the years on the boundaries of executive privilege. But it is worth noting the Legislature has never carved out a specific exemption for the governor’s records since Iowa’s public records laws were first written in 1967.
The Iowa FOI Council has more than a passing interest in these cases. The Council and its executive director, Randy Evans, were among the plaintiffs in a successful public-records lawsuit against Governor Reynolds in 2023. Her refusal now to provide records sought by the Register and Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers is a continuation of her desire to shield documents that might cast her and her administration in a negative light, Evans said.
Evans told reporters this year that the people of Iowa are entitled to evaluate any governor’s conduct and comments. That becomes difficult when Reynolds tries to hide behind what should be a very narrow interpretation of executive privilege.
SUPREME COURT AFFIRMS
PUBLIC COMMENTS AT
GOVERNMENT MEETINGS
The Iowa Supreme Court gave citizen engagement and accessibility to public meetings a much-needed boost earlier this year in an appeal of a lawsuit against the Iowa City Community School District.
The district’s practice of posting full videos of school board meetings on the internet for on-demand public viewing was at the heart of the case.
Government officials, staffs of statewide organizations of cities, counties and school boards, and access advocates like the Iowa Freedom of Information Council worried the court might impose liability for statements expressed during public comment portions of governmental meetings and for their republication via internet posting of meeting recordings on government web sites or YouTube.
But the justices unanimously upheld lower court decisions dismissing the claims by a former girls’ tennis coach at Iowa City West High School. The coach sued over statements two former West High players made during the public-comment time at a 2022 school board meeting
The Supreme Court ruling should curtail a recent practice by an increasing number of public officials who advocated that the risk of defamation lawsuits made it necessary for city councils and school boards to omit or limit public comment periods during their meetings, to warn speakers in advance about what they could and could not say, and even to remove or arrest speakers who made crude or demeaning comments.
The court decision takes away any rational basis for a governmental body to claim it should not archive recordings of meetings for later public viewing. Chief Justice Susan Christensen wrote in the decision:
“The fair-report privilege protects the publication of defamatory matter concerning another in a report of an official action or proceeding or of a meeting open to the public that deals with a matter of public concern … if the report is accurate and complete or a fair abridgement of the occurrence reported.”
The court continued: “Although we are fully articulating this privilege for the first time, we have recognized a version of it since the early 1900s. At the time, the privilege only covered judicial proceedings and could be defeated by a showing of malice. … Here, we are expanding the privilege and updating it so that it covers the report of more proceedings and is defeated by inaccuracy instead of malice.”
The court reiterated the importance of supporting steps that increase public access to governmental meetings. “The application of the fair-report privilege to this case furthers Iowa’s open-meeting laws. … Government entities, including school boards, must prioritize the accessibility of public meetings,” the court wrote.
Here is a link to Randy Evans’ column on the Supreme Court decision: https://open.substack.com/pub/revans2810/p/iowa-supreme-court-spikes-an-excuse?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
NAMES MAKE NEWS
- Dave Dreeszen, the Council’s vice president, has been elevated to interim editor of the Sioux City Journal following the retirement of Bruce Miller, a longtime Journal staff member.
- Rachel Stassen-Berger was named executive editor of The Des Moines Register in May, replacing Carol Hunter, who has retired. Stassen-Berger came to Des Moines from Omaha, where she had served as executive editor of the World-Herald. She formerly was political editor and news director of the Register.
- In March, Natalie Cabieses was named news director of KCCI-TV in Des Moines. She succeeds Allison Smith, a longtime Iowa FOI Council director, who was promoted to general manager of KETV-TV in Omaha, like KCCI a Hearst-owned television station.
- Adam Carros, news director of KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, will serve as chair of the Council’s board of directors for 2026. The Council’s vice chair for 2026 will be Trevis Mayfield, owner of Sycamore Media, an eastern Iowa newspaper group based in Maquoketa.
- Randy Evans, the Council’s president for the past 10 years, was inducted into the Heroes of the 50 States: The State Open Government Hall of Fame by the National Freedom of Information Coalition. The honor recognizes those who have made a substantial and lasting contributions to open government or freedom of information. Evans is the third Iowa honoree, following Herb Strentz, the first Council executive secretary, in 2004, and Michael Giudicessi, the longtime attorney representing the Council and many media clients, in 2017.