Inside the fight over “the worst pro-corruption bill in Iowa history.”
Iowa’s governor, Republican Kim Reynolds, signed a new law on Thursday evening that will significantly restrict the ability of the state auditor — Iowa’s top watchdog — to perform his duties. State Auditor Rob Sand (D) responded with a blistering statement describing the legislation as “the worst pro-corruption bill in Iowa history.”
Iowa votes anti-establishment. It’s not a lost cause for Dems, but it won’t be won state-wide by anyone who isn’t looking to fuck up the establishment’s shit. So Rob Sand is actually someone who could win the governor’s office.
This has been a republican thing at least since reagan: make the data go away, and it’s much harder for people to prove your bad actions. But lately (see also florida) they’ve been getting really good at it. (On the other hand, it also means that leakers and hactivists know more accurately what to target.)
The thing that’s particularly vile about this law is that, in effect, it lets the governor and agencies decide what “might be private” on a case-by-case basis. So for someone they want to protect, everything is private, but if they want to underbus someone, nothing is.
Counterpoint: Joni Ernst, who won office because she was proud of castrating livestock and stuffing newspapers into her moonboots.
(Iowa also has an insane bias for incumbency, so she’s probably Senator for life now.)
ETA: Yes, there’s a strong contradiction between the fuck-up-the-establishment bias and the incumbency bias. You get elected in Iowa to fuck up the establishment, and then you get re-elected into perpetuity because that’s the guy fucking up the establishment’s shit. I love Iowa, but its ignorant grievance politics drive me crazy.
ETA2: The last Democrat to get elected to the Senate in Iowa was Tom Harkin in 1984. Yeah, he got re-elected a few times. See Incumbency Bias.
This saddens me. Iowa voters have long had a classic “good government” outlook – sure, it’s a Midwestern state with a lot of rural/agricultural considerations and tended to shade conservative, but the voters also knew that roads don’t plow themselves in the winter, or patch themselves after the winter’s over.
It also would strip the auditor’s power to issue subpoenas to government entities that are being investigated. Instead of going through the courts, those claims would go through a board of arbitration composed of two members named by the offices where records were being sought and one member appointed by the governor.
Wow. Just wow. Hard to get more blatant than that.
“We have looked into the complaint against us, and find it to be without merit. Next!”
“The idea that, once an audit is underway, that the auditor is going to be denied access to records is fundamentally opposed to the very purpose of an audit,” Sand said.
As anyone honest person who ever worked as an “auditor” including me will tell you, without full unrestricted access to all relevant records, it is not an audit.
As I was reading this I kept thinking which outside group wrote this legislation-and I got to this part:
As he made the rounds fighting the bill in the weeks before it was signed by the governor, Sand pointed to opposition to the measure from the bipartisan National State Auditors Association. He also has the support of conservatives including a handful of Republicans in the legislature and Republican former U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker. Sand has also stressed the fact that the right- wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has model legislation that would do “the opposite” of SF478 and that non-partisan analysts have determined the measure [could cost Iowa $12 billion in federal funding](https://dbrnews.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/iowas-state-auditor-bill-jeopardizes-12b-in-state-funding/article_02659554-9a2e-53b0-83e4-f489ab61f132.html).
So which group, home grown or not wrote this legislation?
