Friday Follow-ups: English-Only and an Eclipse of the Sunshine Laws
Nathan Greene
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By Emily Geiger
English-Only (Except when we decide to use other languages, too)
We reported a while back on the Iowa District Court decision ruling that the Secretary of State’s office was in violation of Iowa’s law stating that English is the official language of the state and state business must be conducted in English. The SOS (i.e. Mike Mauro and his predecessor, now Gov. Buzz Lightyear) had been offering voter registration forms in several languages other than English.
Mauro recently came out and said that he won’t be appealing the District Court decision, which I have to say surprised me. But, he also said they his office would be finding other ways to help the non-English speaking public vote. Now, it appears his plan is to keep making the foreign language forms available, but he would call them “guides” for helping people figure out the English forms.
There are several problems with this. The first is that Mauro’s plan still requires that state funds be spent to produce non-English material, which I think violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the English-only law. The second problem is that Mauro’s policy ignores the elephant in the room. As I’ve discussed on prior occasions, in order to vote, you have to be a citizen. In order to be a citizen, you have to be able to pass your citizenship tests IN ENGLISH. So, if you don’t speak any English, you’re probably not a citizen and you shouldn’t be voting. Ergo, it appears once again that Mauro is looking for ways to promote voter fraud.
And, it was in the news today that the DOT is spending its money on newspaper ads in both English and Spanish, and it plans to continue doing so… another example of public funds being used in ways that don’t appear to be authorized by the English-only law.
Do you really think Steve King is going to let all this slide (especially after he has one court victory under his belt)?
Total Eclipse of the Sunshine Laws
I had to laugh this morning as the Register continued sending its subtle message to the Statehouse Dems regarding its disapproval of how said Dems have handled the various Sunshine law issues of late.
The Register discussed a great example of a situation in Ames where a private individual (who happens to be a building contractor) suspected some funny-business in the way the school district was awarding constructions contracts and spending its money. This guy spent over $1000 of his own money researching the issue through public records.
He took his findings to our resident government corruption detective, State Auditor Dave Vaudt (after the state ombudsman, a Story County attorney and Iowa's attorney general blew him off), who found that “laws requiring competitive bidding had been violated; contracts had been awarded illegally; change orders that resulted in contractors' collecting additional money for work hadn't been properly approved; and contractors had billed the district for more than their agreed-upon fees.”
Even some Dems are saying they think that the Legislature’s failure to strengthen the Sunshine laws this session was a result of “backdoor deals.”
That Ames guy who uncovered the corruption described above says that the school district’s lawyers wanted to charge him $20,000 in legal fees to get the records… just like the plan that Buzz Lightyear has approved for charging attorney fees for public records requests.
If those exorbitant charges had been allowed to stand, does anybody really think that the Ames taxpayers wouldn’t still be getting ripped off right now?
So who is behind the eclipse of the Sunshine Laws? That’s the $64,000 question. But, I’m wondering if the Ames example might not be extremely telling.
What’s the likelihood that that Ames contractor who was getting shafted has a non-union shop, and he was getting passed over in favor union shops who had “special arrangements” with the school district? What’s the likelihood that there are numerous other similar situations all across the state? What’s the likelihood that the unions put pressure on the Dems in the Statehouse (who the unions help elect every cycle) to take measures to keep this racket under raps so the practice could continue? Wouldn’t the best way to accomplish this be to make it almost impossible for the public to examine the public records that would expose this corruption?
All you have to do is follow the money and ask yourself, who benefits?
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