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Editorial, "Vilsack Leaves Iowa Better Than He Found It"

Maria Houser Conzemius, "Gilchrist Takes on UI Establishment"

[Note: This material is copyright by the Press-Citizen, and is reproduced here as a matter of "fair use" for non-commercial, educational purposes only. Any other use may require the prior approval of the Iowa City Press-Citizen.]

First, the Press-Citizen reported recently in regard to the presidential search that "officials in the Attorney General's Office have said four lawyers advised the Regents before they conducted the meetings in question." ("Press-Citizen sues Board of Regents," Dec. 21.) That is incorrect. I understand you reported earlier that Gov. Vilsack said four attorneys advised the Regents; but that did not include me or other lawyers from the Attorney General's Office.

Second, your Jan. 3 editorial ("Our View -- Allow records to stand to public scrutiny") said the Attorney General's Office "advised CIETC ... to withhold public access to records that explain its legal expenses." That is incorrect, or at a minimum it omits key information. The fact is, we wrote to CIETC that we had "concluded that the itemized billing statements are public documents available for inspection and copying under the Iowa Open Records Act. ..."

We went on to say that our message should be considered as notice to CIETC that the state would release the documents in 10 business days, unless CIETC filed an action in Iowa District court seeking an injunction to prevent disclosure of the documents. (We did that because CIETC had expressly stated it was providing the documents under protest and does not believe they are public records.) Such a process recently was affirmed in another matter by Judge Donna Paulsen in Polk County. The process enables a court to decide the rights of third parties whose records are requested, but access is contested.

Third, your Jan. 3 editorial also found fault with our advice to the university that personal e-mails from John Colloton are not fulfilling any official function, and are not public records. If he were assigned a function or duty by University Hospitals or the president of the university, records carrying out that function would be public records. But when acting on his own, even expressing public opinions, the records are personal to him and not public records. That is our best reading of the law as applied to this situation.

We are committed to compliance with Iowa's Open Meetings and Public Records laws. Our mission is always to "call 'em like we see 'em."
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Tom Miller is the Attorney General of Iowa.

Not surprisingly, Gov. Tom Vilsack, in his final Condition of the State address Tuesday, focused on what he views as the grand accomplishments of his eight years as the state's chief executive: investing $200 million in the state's schools to reduce class size in the early grades; implementing the Strong Start early childhood initiative; reducing the cost of nursing home care with the Senior Living Trust; and having Vision Iowa, Community Attractions and Tourism and the Values Fund invest in cities throughout the state.

Indeed, Vilsack has a lot to be proud of. Governing as a "moderate" who had to work with a Legislature controlled by the opposition party, he's led the state through a recession without raising taxes, improved access to health care, ended his tenure with a budget surplus and helped his party win a trifecta of state power in the 2006 election.

In general, Iowa has done well by Vilsack. When evaluated in terms of the strategic initiatives he identified early in office, the Pennsylvania-born governor finishes up with a better than average record. Anyone following the 2006 gubernatorial campaigns repeatedly heard how Iowa is on the verge of becoming a Silicon Valley for biotechnology -- that the state could start powering the world in addition to feeding the world. Vilsack helped position the state in this role, even if the promised payoffs for such endeavors won't be seen until at least during the next administration.

Iowa likewise has managed to hold its own in terms of wages amid the fluctuations of the economy in the past eight years. The state has made progress in encouraging its aging population to stay in the work force and -- except for the embarrassing exception of the state's vacuous English as the Official Language law -- improved the opportunities afforded to immigrants seeking to make a home in Iowa.

But Vilsack's presidential aspirations will continue to be clouded by accusations of racial bias in the state's hiring practices, by the continuing revelations at scandal-prone CIETC as well as by what many local residents view as his lack of commitment to higher education. Nationally, the accusations of racial bias will fuel those already skeptical that the governor of a state with such a small minority population could understand how overwhelmingly diverse the nation is becoming. The CIETC scandal likewise becomes easy fodder for critics who wonder how effective a watchdog Vilsack would be for money spent on federal projects.

Vilsack's record on higher education issues will haunt him more locally, however. Too often, the advances in PreK-12 education in the last few years have seemed to come at the expense of college and university education. Indeed, the rhetoric used in budget debates too often pitted the regent universities against both PreK-12 education and the community college system. Add to that Vilsack's appointment of one regent with a clear violation of interest and another whose alienating management skills inspired no-confidence votes from throughout the University of Iowa community, and it's clear that Vilsack will have to spend a lot of time persuading Johnson County Democrats that he should earn their party's nomination for the nation's top office.

All in all, Vilsack is leaving Iowa better than he found it. We wish him luck in his presidential campaign, and we're sure he'll help improve Iowa's reputation on the national stage.

Kudos to Mary Gilchrist, former director of the University Hygienic Laboratory, for suing University of Iowa Interim President Gary Fethke and Vice President of Research Meredith Hay for firing her for spurious reasons. "Passion" for excellence is no reason to fire someone. If there is a whistle-blower protection law that comes into play here, I hope that it's enforced and enforced broadly.

'Do some endocrinology'

What would you think if the interim president told you to "Do some endocrinology" and refused to hear your concerns when the vice president for research told you that the university is not responsible to protect the health of Iowans and wants to divest of the laboratory? That's what Gilchrist said happened to her. (The text of Gilchrist's lawsuit can be found at www.iowanswantthebestlab.org/media/files/Gilchrist_vs_Fethke-Hay_Complaint.pdf).

"Do some endocrinology" might sound simply odd on the face of it, but it would sound downright sexist and ageist to a female scientist who knows that endocrinology is the study of hormones -- and Gilchrist is at the approximate age of menopause in women. Plus, don't forget, she is a microbiologist, not an endocrinologist. Because endocrinology has little to do with being director of the University Hygienic Laboratory, it would seem that Fethke subtly was calling Gilchrist a menopausal shrew and telling her to go away.

Remember when Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers belittled the female brain's ability to do science? It cost him his job. If Fethke is quoted accurately, such a comment ought to cost him his job as well.

Iowa's public health

Gilchrist's lawsuit has a lot to do with protecting the public health of Iowans. While she is advocating a change in laboratory governance, she also advocates for a strong affiliation with UI for resources and also to provide competitive salaries and university benefits to existing lab staff. As a former lab employee and a long-time university employee, I can imagine how frightened the current employees must be.

The lawsuit also raises another important question: If the vice president of research does not view the lab's mission as protecting the public health of Iowans, why is she in a position to oversee a lab whose mission is to protect the public health of all Iowans?

If the protection of the public health of Iowans isn't part of the university's mission, neither she nor any university official should be accepting state and federal money for a new public health laboratory. Because the federal government gave UI $1.4 million to build a new hygienic laboratory and the Iowa Legislature gave the university $36 million, we can assume that our federal and state legislators think those funds are spent to help protect the public health of Iowans.

It might sound like a good business decision to accept government money and then cut the size of the original plans for the lab, but it doesn't sound good for the university's mission -- especially when university leaders also told Gilchrist she couldn't lobby for additional funds to keep the original plans on the table.

As Gilchrist wrote in her Dec. 18 guest opinion, Trust for America recently ranked Iowa in the lowest category for its preparedness for a public health disaster. The Hygienic Laboratory itself scored deficient in year-round influenza testing, staffing sufficiency and lab infrastructure. Yet that's where Iowans send their water samples to be tested. That's where West Nile virus samples were tested. That's where dangerous viruses and bacteria of all types are tested.

When looked at from this perspective, Gilchrist's proposal to keep the original size of the new laboratory and furnish the lab temporarily with existing furniture and equipment until further funding could be identified sounds like an excellent plan.

'The stakes are so low'

When asked why academic politics is so venomous, Dr. Henry Kissinger replied, "Because the stakes are so low." Unfortunately, UI history shows this aphorism to be too true. Anyone who has read the UI's settlement with former Professor Jean Jew of the Department of Anatomy will not be surprised at the sexism, ageism and general maliciousness of UI administrators. I think Fethke and Hay should be ashamed of themselves.

I hope the university will lose so big that the court will obligate them to distribute the settlement document to anyone in the public who asks for it, as was the case with Jew's win against the university. I got my free copy from Kinko's downtown.
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Maria Houser Conzemius is a former social worker, a member of the Press-Citizen's Writers' Group and a Varsity Blogger for mypc.press-citizen.com.