When dealing with the Iowa Public Information Board, being a mind-reader helps.
That is one takeaway from the board’s dismissal last week of a public-records complaint against Attorney General Brenna Bird’s office.
The request was made on December 4, 2024 by Chad Brewbaker, who asked the attorney general for the fees her office paid to private attorneys. His complaint to the Iowa Public Information Board alleged he never received an acknowledgement of his request or the data showing how taxpayer money was spent.
Beginning in January 2025 and continuing until he filed the IPIB complaint on August 11, Brewbaker said he emailed the attorney general each month to remind her of his request and ask, “Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.”
His case highlights a fundamental problem with Iowa’s public-records law:
It does not say how long a government body may take to respond to a records request. The case also illustrates the problems Iowans can face when seeking help from the Public Information Board.
The Legislature created the board in 2012 to provide an efficient way for people to resolve disputes involving access to government meetings and records without the time and expense of a lawsuit. The law requires complaints to be filed within 60 days of when a violation occurred.
The public-records statute does not set a deadline for government officials to comply with access requests. Instead, the law merely says “a good-faith reasonable delay” is permissible. Even so, Public Information Board guidance in 2014 said a records custodian “shall comply with the request as soon as feasible.”
The Iowa Supreme Court twice has held undue delays in providing responsive records violate the statute. In one case involving Gov. Kim Reynolds, journalists Laura Belin and Clark Kauffman and the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, the court said a failure to respond to a records request was the same as an outright denial of the request.
That brings us back to Brewbaker, an Urbandale resident who often seeks government records as he pushes for accountability.
On Thursday, without discussion, the Public Information Board unanimously threw out his complaint as untimely.
The board’s dismissal treats an ignored request for records as a knowable violation within roughly two months. The board also made clear that follow-up requests for the same records do not restart the 60-day filing clock.
While Iowa’s public-records law has never explicitly said how long a government body may take to answer a request, the IPIB may have backhandedly provided an answer in the Brewbaker decision.
The board’s order said Brewbaker missed his 60-day filing deadline by a wide margin. He “could have become aware” of the attorney general’s delay “within the weeks following his initial request being ignored,” the order said. At the latest, he could have known “within the following month or two after receiving no response.”
Brewbaker had an answer for that analysis. He argued the attorney general’s violation was “active, continuous, and renewed on an ongoing, monthly basis.”
In other words, he asserted each unanswered follow-up email to the attorney general was a fresh refusal that reset the 60-day deadline.
The Public Information Board rejected that continuing-violation theory. “Follow-up emails cannot be used to extend or circumvent the strict sixty-day filing deadline,” the order said.
The board reasoned repeated requests for the same records do not pause the deadline or start a new one. The clock runs from the first stretch of silence, not the most recent one.
Here is where the person seeking government records needs to be a mind-reader.
The requester must somehow determine when a permissible delay becomes an unlawful one and then file a complaint with the Public Information Board within 60 days.
Common sense would say a 60-day filing period cannot start before there is a violation to complain about. If silence for a few weeks is still a lawful, reasonable delay, there is nothing yet to be aware of or complaint about.
But if the clock begins with the request and nothing is heard for an unreasonable but unspecified time, the IPIB order effectively treats that passage of time as the silent refusal to provide the records.
That leaves the requester with a difficult question: Exactly when does a lawful delay become an unlawful one?
Based on the board’s reasoning, an ignored request becomes a knowable violation of the public-records law by at least the 60th day. A requester who waits beyond that point to file a complaint risks losing the board’s assistance, as Brewbaker learned.
Effectively, that says you’d better file your complaint by day 59 after your request has gone without acknowledgement or production of the documents you sought.
That is a short window for someone who may be left to guess whether a government agency is processing a request, experiencing a legitimate delay or simply ignoring it.
Efforts to extend the filing period to 90 days have failed to gain traction in the Legislature in recent years. A courthouse deadline for a lawsuit is significantly longer — two full years — but filing at the Public Information Board cuts off the direct path to court.
There is a lesson here for people seeking government records: If an agency has ignored your request for more than two months, the IPIB’s 60-day window may already be closed and a civil lawsuit in district court may be the only remaining avenue to enforce the violation.
So much for a speedy and efficient remedy.
And so much for a clear and predictable standard and timeline for pursuing a case at the Public Information Board — unless, of course, you are a clairvoyant who can read the minds of government officials.
Score this one for Attorney General Bird and the Public Information Board, where silence beat action and the clock ran out on an Iowan before he may have known it was ticking.
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Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com.
