Iowa government overhaul is half-baked
If you've ever had consultants involved in a reorganization in your workplace, you know that even the best consultants will make missteps because they don’t know the organization’s culture and needs.
In this country, we lionize the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the point where some consider constitutional amendments almost heretical. This is, perhaps, not a healthy attitude; previous generations have wisely revamped presidential succession, election of senators, citizenship, and voting rights.
But there are always those worthy elements that we must preserve. No one has seriously contemplated altering the fundamentals: separation of powers into the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. Selection of leaders by the people. Government of the people, by the people, for the people.
From those fundamentals, we get some guiding principles: that government should be focused on fixing real problems that are facing us. That government should be transparent so that the people can exercise their right to select leaders who are acting in the interest of the people. That there should be checks and balances within the system. That government should be responsive to the people it serves.
Turning these principles to our current Iowa legislative session, we are sadly disappointed. Iowa has very real, very serious problems facing it today. We have the second-highest rate of cancer in the nation, and we are the only state with a rising cancer rate. We, like the rest of the country, are facing a mental health crisis among our teen girls and LGBTQ+ youths. The days of cash crop ethanol are numbered. Our waterways are sick. We face an ongoing teacher shortage. Our education ranking keeps dropping.
Instead of focusing on these issues, responding to the needs of Iowans, our legislature is laser-focused on making the lives of those at-risk children harder, taking decision-making out of the hands of parents, and shrinking the government at the expense of the people who it is supposed to serve.
This last one is particularly egregious. Applying those fundamental principles, we would expect our state government to be focused on providing better services to Iowans. The best way to know what people need from government is to involve them in decision-making and reorganizing efforts. And even when they don’t get what they want, they’ll have a stake in the outcome because the process was democratic.
Contrast this with the process that the Reynolds administration has followed in creating its bill to reorganize Iowa’s state government. The bill was developed in secret based on recommendations of an out-of-state consultant, informed only by executive branch insiders, not even consulting Republican legislators. Despite being presented as a mere reorganization effort, it makes major policy changes, ranging from taking away the independence of department heads by having them serve “at the pleasure of the governor” to allowing the state’s attorney general to directly interfere in county attorneys’ decisions.
Insidiously, some of the proposed consolidations would defang agencies that are supposed to serve as watchdogs to agencies they would now report to. For example, the Iowa Court Appointed Special Advocates represent the interests of children in child welfare actions; they are often opposed to Health & Human Services, whom they would now report to.
This bill was developed by consultants and the executive branch over the course of months. In all that time, they never consulted the public. It would consolidate power in the hands of the executive branch at the expense of the legislature and local officials. Still, the Legislature appears poised to rush all 1,500 pages through without fully considering its ramifications. Legislative Republicans would, it seems, trust consultants over the many Iowans who have expressed concerns and the conscientious Iowa legislatures of the past who created these agencies. If you have ever had consultants involved in a reorganization in your workplace, you know that even the best consultants will make missteps because they don’t know the organization’s culture and needs.
The Reynolds administration gave East Coast consultants a million dollars to reorganize our flyover state’s government. Should we trust them?
Shannon Patrick and Kelcey Patrick-Ferree live in Iowa.
Originally published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on March 11, 2023.