• Reports/Inquiries from Elected Officials

• Discussion: Requests for Information, Freedom of Information, Public Records

• Discussion: Supervisors Strategic Planning

• Set Next Meeting Date and Time

Chairperson Painter called the Johnson County Elected Officials Meeting to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 1:33 p.m.

Elected officials present were: County Attorney J. Patrick White; County Auditor Tom Slockett; County Recorder Kim Painter; County Supervisors Pat Harney, Mike Lehman, Terrence Neuzil, and Sally Stutsman; and County Treasurer Tom Kriz. Staff present were: Board of Supervisors Administrative Assistant Carol Peters, and Auditor’s Office Recording Secretary Casie Parkins.

Stutsman said she has been in touch with local legislators about the property tax freeze. The Board of Supervisors and Budget Coordinator Jeff Horne are going to work on putting together a letter to be sent to their legislative delegation about what kind of impact the proposal from the Farm Bureau would have on local and county government. The Iowa State Association of Counties suggested putting in the letter what wouldn’t have been funded this year had the property tax been in place.

Neuzil reported that the Board of Supervisors had a Strategic Planning meeting in the past week and put together a lot of ideas for goals and a vision for the future, and a lot of the ideas would involve other elected officials.

County Auditor Tom Slockett said the North Liberty Special Election is taking place today. At 11:00 a.m., 66 people had voted at the polls and 20 had voted early, resulting in 86 votes altogether so far. He said these numbers are typical and the polls will close at 8 p.m.

County Treasurer Tom Kriz said the March tax season is approaching and the workload is picking up considerably. The Treasurer's Office has had numerous calls recently because delinquent tax notices were sent out on February 15th and the Iowa City Assessor’s Office has sent out the new valuations on properties. Many citizens are shocked at their new assessments on some of their property in Iowa City. Kriz reminded people that taxes are due March 1st, with penalties occurring after the 31st. The Treasurer's Office sent out over 2,000 delinquent notices for those who had not paid their taxes from September. Kriz said they would be open until midnight on Friday, March 29th, and the deadline for postmarks is on Saturday.

Lehman said there are now estimates to replace some basics in the energy management system from the lightning strike that occurred at the Administration Building on February 14, 2001. Johnson Controls has been able to maintain it temporarily and it is on a manual system right now. Lehman said insurance might cover the $8,000 needed for basics. He said for the Administration Building the estimate for a complete update is about $19,000 and the Courthouse estimate is $15,000. Lehman attended Iowa City Area Development Strategic Planning meeting today. Lehman said it was mentioned that the funding to ICAD was going to be cut from $20,000 to $15,000 and he had explained the rationale behind that. He said there are things the County wants ICAD to help them with and wants to see results. Lehman said he and Harney talked to the Farm Bureau and they want more of a County update along with the budget. He said one of things the Farm Bureau discussed was why the carryover builds up. Lehman explained to them that carryover could be for specific items in technology and capital expenditures. The Farm Bureau usually just sees the dollar amounts and doesn't understand what they're for. Lehman encouraged the Farm Bureau to get to know some of the nuts and bolts and requirements of the budget to understand why carryover is building up.

County Recorder Kim Painter said the County external newsletter comes out Wednesday in the Community News Advertiser. Painter was a guest on the KCJJ government radio show recently and it went well.

Slockett said that requests for information, freedom of information and public records had been discussed at the last department head meeting. Slockett said it was reported back to him that if you don't keep emails then there wouldn’t be a problem. Slockett said he wonders what if you do keep emails. He said there have been some threats from some members of the public wanting freedom of information items as part of a bullying tactic. Slockett had read of requests by more reputable people for Freedom of Information requests from the City of Coralville. Because these requests can happen, Slockett asked what to do in this situation, specifically with requests for all emails on a certain subject over a period of years. He said he knows that people are allowed access to look at public records, but the County doesn't have to look up these public records for them. Slockett asked how this applies to emails and should the County establish a system to allow queries of emails by subject. His concern was about the amount of time required to go through emails. He said just deleting emails isn’t the solution because they can be useful later as references and are valuable documents. It is not a good idea to delete them. He underscored that they are public records.

White said each situation has its own analysis and it’s not always yes or no. He said the basic rules are that if it exists then it is a record subject to being inspected and copied, which is the tenor of the Iowa Public Records Statute. White said he has found himself using email instead of phone calls, thereby creating a public record that wouldn't normally exist. He said that locating certain topics in email isn't really any different, except that it's a higher volume, than the same request from 5 years ago when email wasn't used as much. He said if it's there it is subject to being inspected and copied unless it falls within one of the confidential categories under Section 22.7 of the Code. In regard to paper documents, he said there isn’t a requirement that an employee devote search time. Many custodians of records would make a decision that it’s a good idea to search rather than let the public spend time going through papers, which is a policy judgment rather than a legal requirement. A recent request that triggered some reflection on this is a citizen who asked for all of Budget Coordinator Jeff Horne’s emails to the Board of Supervisors about budget issues. White suggested possibly developing a policy on what to keep and if communication to the Board of Supervisors should be retained. He said a phone message probably isn't kept if someone calls and says, for example, tell the Board of Supervisors that they want their taxes lowered, and asked if an email of the same nature is any different.

Slockett said this is a huge deal because there is such a large volume of emails and searching for topics could be a large task. Slockett asked if it's adequate to let a person sit at a terminal, find what they need, then print off what they need and charge them per page. He said that maybe Information Services could set up some sort of read-only mode so that the member of the public couldn’t cause any mischief in going through past emails. Slockett said email is a little bit of a cross between a telephone conversation and a letter, there is a written documentation of it. There may be humor and sarcasm that might be understood by the receiver of an email. White said it isn't illegal to have personal emails, just as someone can make personal local phone calls. He noted that a personal email on the County email system is a public record. An email sent from the County and received by a private individual is not considered a public record for the recipient unless they choose to release it.

Painter said a tool that can help if there are a lot of back and forth e-mails on the same topic is to sort by subject. She said this doesn't always help since the tools are very limited. White said he doesn’t save every email or letter that passes by him and he makes his own policy judgment on what he wants to save and what he doesn’t. Stutsman agreed that she has no problem with public access to records but questioned whether it is worth the taxpayers’ money to have County employees researching emails. Slockett said that in the past it's been a great fallback to welcome people to come and search through documents, but it might make people more nervous to let them look through your emails.

Neuzil said if something is confidential he normally prints it on paper, files it under confidential and then deletes the email. Neuzil said an example of something that he's been marking as confidential is a letter from someone. White said that isn't confidential unless it's about a confidential category under Section 22.7 of the Code of Iowa. Stutsman said just marking something confidential doesn't mean it really is confidential and excluded from the public. White said this gets very confusing because Section 22.7 subsection 18 has to do with communications made by persons not in government and not required has been used to treat as confidential a lot of things. He noted the bizarre aspects of the public records laws, noting candidates for job openings might have more confidentiality than victims of crimes. White said that once he was taken all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court demanding to be able to look at a phone message that one of White's secretaries had written and kept in the file. He said the man eventually lost and the legal theory the court relied on there had more to do with attorneys than non-attorneys. Neuzil said he feels bad for those sending letters in good faith that it will be kept private, yet anyone can view it because it's a letter. Slockett said that if someone really wants something completely confidential like a letter then they could send it to a home address. For purposes of internal control due to receiving money through the mail, all mail in the Auditor’s Office is opened and file-stamped.

Slockett suggested that people could be charged for the time if the County had to do a search for them. He noted in the past there was less flexibility accessing computer information and programming time might have been charged. He said this might sober people up because if they have to spend personal time then they are less likely to do so, especially if costs are incurred by the individual rather than by the taxpayers. Slockett said by letting people do research it shows the County isn't obstructing or hiding anything. Lehman said there should be a cost determined for the research or for the use of the equipment or supplies. Slockett said the way he does it is to give the hourly-rate for an employee who would be doing it and he doesn't guarantee how long it would take. He said there have been times when someone has ordered copies of documents and then he never came to pick them up. If a person has material they have ordered without paying for it, and orders something else, they have to put the money down first. Neuzil asked if they are allowed to delete information they are done with. Lehman said yes until a policy is established.

White asked how much email the Board of Supervisors is getting from the public per day. Neuzil said he gets about 30-40 a day and at least half is County business, noting much is business of various committees. He asked if it's all right to delete these emails. White said if you get an email that you would have thrown away had it been in the form of a letter or paper document, then you can delete it. There was discussion of the rule-of-thumb on personal phone calls that can be applied to personal emails, that if there is any cost to the taxpayers, for example printing copies, not using break time or incurring long distance fees, then it shouldn’t occur. Lehman asked Board of Supervisors Administrative Assistant Carol Peters how it works if someone comes in wanting to see a resolution. Peters said she gives them a hard copy and charges them $.25. She said she is hesitant to have people look at her email because there is confidential information in there that isn't distinguished as being confidential. Lehman said there could be emails between Board members discussing something for an executive session. White said he exchanges a lot of email about personnel situations.

White said, in regards to hiring, he thinks the state of the law is whether they promised confidentiality and whether the employee asked for it. He said the law permits confidentiality if rules are established offering it and asking for it. He said that if you're hiring a Clerk II and you don't hold out any promise of confidentiality and none is requested, it's not a confidential job application. Slockett asked if the law states the applicant has to ask for such. White said there has to be an offer and acceptance as a contractual context to put it in. He said the law does apply to giving consideration to taking applications confidentially and then the person would submit it with that understanding since they may not want anyone to know they are putting in an application.

There was discussion about allowing inspection of original documents under supervision. White discussed the need for training public officials regarding public documents. He said economical training could be organized using the ICN.

Painter said there have been conversations already about the data available in electronic formats that can be readily shared. She said it has a lot of sensitive personal information, so that even though it is a public record, people are squeamish about having it out there associated with names. She said there is a push for greater access to data in more convenient ways and also a big privacy backlash going through legislatures across the country. Slockett said he has always opposed associating a person's name with an address or phone number. He said people can have privacy within the phone book but it isn't the case with public information filed in the Courthouse. He said information shouldn’t be put on the Internet in that way, even though it would be legal to do. Putting records out by address without name would be acceptable.

White said the public record statute is probably in need of being revisited. He said there is nothing in the Statute that exempts drafts from being public record. He said he doesn't get anybody demanding to see drafts. Slockett said he is going to speak with Information Services Director Jean Schultz about a read-only program for the public to use for researching within email.

Lehman said they looked at long-term planning (7-8 years) and short-term planning (2-3 years). Stutsman said in past years other elected officials were involved in strategic planning and asked if they wanted that to happen again. She said the Board of Supervisors put together their own strategic planning goals. Board of Supervisors Administrative Assistant Carol Peters said the format is to look at what is strategic planning within the office and then look at the County as a whole. White said past Supervisors invited elected officials to share their ideas regarding public policy. Harney said it would be good to get feedback from other elected officials and see what they would like to see done in their areas in the future. He said there might be goals out of that the Supervisors are overlooking. Lehman said he didn't know how much more in depth to get than in department head meetings. White said that a criticism from elected officials in the past is that department head meetings made Information Services and Zoning Directors have the same input as the Auditor or Treasurer. He said they do stand in a different status because elected officials have different perspectives and are more than department heads. White said he feels that department head meetings are not particularly a good use of time. He said there have been some good ones and the better ones seem to be when someone is assigned to do a presentation. He said having everyone show up and go around telling what is new isn’t a good use of his time. Stutsman said she feels department heads and elected officials meetings are good communication tools. She said that maybe it would be better to have presentations that cross all departments first, then at the end go around the room so if someone chooses to leave they can. Lehman said there are presentations by department heads that do cross all boundaries, such as Human Resources. Painter mentioned the possibility of having a set time between Board Meetings where department heads or elected officials not on the Board could talk about their department briefly. She said this might take some pressure off of the department head/elected official meeting as a way for the Board to gather information. Stutsman said she is interested in having another strategic planning session involving elected officials. Slockett said this is a good idea if the Board feels it is a good use of time, since their departments and space depends on strategic planning.

Stutsman left at 2:40 p.m.

White asked if the Board would like a session on Strategic Planning with just the elected officials in the next few weeks. Neuzil said the Board might want to get a draft from Strategic Planning Facilitator Tim Shields first. White asked if they need Shields. Lehman said that White means when the results come back they can sit down and visit and see how the elected officials come into play with what the Board is looking at. Neuzil said he would like to hear their thoughts on some of the Board's priorities. Slockett said it would be of value to have Shields in the room because of his ability to precipitate dialogue and communication. He said there is something about this process that doesn't seem very even with the Board having their own meeting first and then having a meeting with the elected officials after they have discussed the whole plan. Painter said she would like to participate in the process and her vision of it is that it would evolve into a procedure that they all go through together every year from the beginning to the end. She said this could be a really good working strategic plan for the County and all of its offices and areas. Painter said it seems as though the consensus is to make Shields a part of the meeting.

Neuzil said anybody who wants to be a part of the KCJJ radio show on Sunday mornings, Government and You, should notify him. He listed a number of government officials who have been on the show sharing what is going on in their offices.

Painter said space is reserved to showcase departments for the County Fair, July 23-26. She said they would probably discuss this at meetings in April and to have ideas ready.

The elected officials set their next meeting for April 17, 2001 at 12:00 p.m.

Adjourned at 2:50 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By: Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary