Transparency key to success of I-JOBS, says Culver adviser

The success or failure of Gov. Chet Culver’s $830 million I-JOBS program will be determined, in part, by how open the process is to the public, according to one of the governor’s key advisers.

Phil Roeder, Culver’s deputy chief of staff, said making sure people across the state understand how the money can be used, how it is being used and what sort of impact it’s having is something the governor and his staff are taking very seriously.

“Transparency is at the top of the list of priorities with this program,” Roeder said. “The purpose of I-JOBS is to strengthen the economy and improve the state’s infrastructure, but at the same time, a key priority has got to be openness. We have to be an open book so the public can see how the funds are being spent.”

The first step to that will be ensuring the I-JOBS board, scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon for the first time, will adhere to open records and open meetings laws. The board will decide how Iowa spends $118.5 million of the money, and Roeder said it would move quickly to establish rules for distributing the funds and keeping the public informed.

“Everyone in the administration understands that with I-JOBS, time is of the essence,” Roeder said. “In order to have impact on the economy, we have to move quickly.”

The next step, Roeder said, will be establishing a Web site to allow citizens to track the money from start to finish.

“The ultimate goal is to set up a site that lets people follow the money from application for funds to how decisions are being made to distribution all the way down to how many jobs it is creating,” Roeder said.

The program’s Web presence is currently under construction, but Roeder said it will be modeled after the federal economic recovery program, which has set up Web sites in all 50 states in order to track funds.

Bill Allison, a senior fellow with the non-profit government transparency watchdog the Sunlight Foundation, said the key for Iowa is to ensure there is one spot where citizens can go to follow the money.

“One of the things that make it difficult to follow on the federal level is that there are all kinds of places that are reporting information,” he said. “There are multiple sites reporting different things.”

Despite years of experience working with open records and government spending, Allison said it’s still difficult for him to find information he’s looking for.

“If it’s hard for me, someone who makes a living doing this and has done it for years, then for the average citizen it will be hard to find information they need,” he said.

The ideal Web site would allow citizens to search spending by ZIP code or legislative district, Allison said. Doing so would attract “more eyeballs to the process, which would help catch any potential fraud or abuse.”

Another key, Allison said, is that when the prerequisites for receiving funds are formally established they must be easily understandable to the general public.

“Making them easier for people to understand and more transparent will lead to more participation in this,” he said.

Kathleen Richardson, director of Iowa Freedom of Information Council, said a Web presence is key, but ensuring the I-JOBS board follows state open meetings laws is just as important to ensure the program is transparent and accountable.

“Certainly, in this day and age, any type of government transparency should have an online component that allows citizens to track spending,” she said. “Making sure the government is accountable also involves making sure decisions take place in public, too.”

Iowa boards have not always had the best record when it comes to openness.

Nearly a decade ago, former Gov. Tom Vilsack appointed a 13-member board to negotiate with cities vying for Vision Iowa grants from the state. In 2001, the board was the center of controversy when it was discovered that it held closed-door negotiations with officials from Des Moines and Davenport using a loophole in Iowa’s open meetings law unofficially known as a “walking quorum.” The loophole occurs when elected officials rotate fewer than half of their board or council members in and out of meetings to avoid reaching a quorum and open meetings laws.

Roeder said that with the historic size and scope of the I-JOBS program, a greater emphasis on being as open as possible is necessary for its success and to gain the public’s approval.

“The more people know about I-JOBS, the more supportive they become,” he said. “The more people understand how it works, the more access they have to information, then the more appreciation people will have of how much this means to the state. So there really is an obligation and a commitment to make sure that everything is available to the public and easily accessible.”