The Iowa Attorney General’s Office gave the UI Faculty Senate confirmation Thursday that it does not have to abide by Iowa’s open-meetings laws.
UI Faculty Senate — composed of 81 representatives from various academic fields — reviews policies that affect faculty and advises UI President Sally Mason, along with other top administrators. The Faculty Council is a smaller administrative agency of the senate.
Last spring, the senate went into an executive session to discuss budget issues on two separate occasions, both with UI Provost Wallace Loh.
Former Senate President Michael O’Hara explained at the time that the decision to go into closed session was to allow a more open discussion among faculty members.
But some at the meetings wondered whether the Faculty Senate should be able to go into executive sessions and questioned whether it was in violation of the state open-meeting laws.
The state Board of Regents has also discussed the issue since then. At its August meeting, Regent President David Miles said he would like more information on whether the group fell under open-meetings laws.
But based on the approval from the Attorney General’s Office, the regents are not required to do so.
Iowa law states every person has the right to access a public record, which includes all information held by a “government body.”
In broad terms, a government body is considered to be any entity or subdivision of the state, said Kathleen Richardson, the executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council at Drake University in Des Moines.
“The presumption under Iowa law is that if it’s a public record, it should be open for public inspection unless it falls under some sort of exception,” she said.
According to the Iowa Open Meetings, Open Records handbook, government bodies are only allowed into closed sessions for certain occasions, most of which are personnel issues.
Since the state attorney general said the Faculty Senate doesn’t fall under that category, the entity has the right to withhold information it doesn’t want to have out in public, Drake said.
That includes sensitive issues dealing with the budget or proposals, he said.
It’s sometimes helpful to discuss proposals in private, he said — that way, people are more open and aren’t afraid of seeing what they say in the media.
Aside from discussing budget cuts, the UI Faculty Senate is involved in the administrative searches in the UI; the central administration often asks Faculty Senate members and committees for advice on potential faculty hires.
Miles said he believes it’s important that decisions regarding the public’s money be made in open sessions, but the UI Faculty Senate doesn’t make those decisions, he noted.
“Really, the Board of Regents is making those decisions anyway,” he said.
As for budget issues this year, Drake said the Faculty Senate does not plan to go into closed sessions, but it could happen if the need arises.