24FC:0069 William Vandenberg/Lee County - Dismissal Order

Date:
10/17/2024

Subject:
William Vandenberg/Lee County  - Dismissal Order

Opinion:

The Iowa Public Information Board

COMES NOW, Erika Eckley, Executive Director for the Iowa Public Information Board (IPIB), and enters this Dismissal Order:

On August 10, 2024, William Vandenberg filed formal complaint 24FC:0069, alleging Lee County violated Iowa Code  chapter 22.

Facts

On July 29, 2024, William Vandenberg submitted a public records request with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office seeking access to records related to “Firearm qualifications training for each deputy from January 1, 2022 through June 30, 2024 to include officer, date, and weapon system trained on” and “Annual training documentation from January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2023 to include officer, training course name, and training hours per each course.”

On August 8, 2024, Lee County declined the request, citing Iowa Code § 22.7(11), which protects certain personal information in confidential personnel records from chapter 22 disclosure requirements.

On August 10, 2024, Vandenberg filed a formal complaint with IPIB, alleging Lee County had violated chapter 22 by refusing to release the requested records. Vandenberg subsequently proposed the training information could be released with the officers’ names and badge numbers redacted to prevent individuals from being identified.

On August 26, Lee County responded be reasserting the confidentiality of the requested records, stating training records, scores, and other associated information are personal to each employee and maintained as part of their confidential personnel records. On this basis, Lee County asserted a right to withhold the requested documents and requested dismissal of the complaint.

Lee County also included an affidavit from Captain Craig Burch, in which Burch affirms the requested records are personal to each employee and are maintained as a part of employee personnel records.

Applicable Law

“The following public records shall be kept confidential, unless otherwise ordered by a court, by the lawful custodian of the records, or by another person duly authorized to release such information:

11. a. Personal information in confidential personnel records of government bodies relating to identified or identifiable individuals who are officials, officers, or employees of the government bodies. However, the following information relating to such individuals contained in personnel records shall be public records, except as otherwise provided in section 80G.3 [a provision protecting the confidentiality of personnel information for undercover law enforcement officers]:

(1) The name and compensation of the individual including any written agreement establishing compensation or any other terms of employment excluding any information otherwise excludable from public information pursuant to this section or any other applicable provision of law. [definition of "compensation” omitted]

(2) The dates the individual was employed by the government body.

(3) The positions the individual holds or has held with the government body.

(4) The educational institutions attended by the individual, including any diplomas and degrees earned, and the names of the individual’s previous employers, positions previously held, and dates of previous employment.

(5) The fact that the individual resigned in lieu of termination, was discharged, or was demoted as the result of a disciplinary action, and the documented reasons and rationale for the resignation in lieu of termination, the discharge, or the demotion. For the purposes of this subparagraph, “demoted” and “demotion” mean a change of an employee from a position in a given classification to a position in a classification having a lower pay grade.” Iowa Code § 22.7(11)(a).

Analysis

Chapter 22 establishes that every person shall have the right to examine and copy a public record and to public or otherwise disseminate a public record or information contained therein. Iowa Code § 22.2. Transparency is thus the default rule for public records, though the general assembly has also outlined a list of over seventy specific categories of records which may be kept confidential. Iowa Code § 22.7. The Iowa Supreme Court has provided that the disclosure requirement should generally be interpreted broadly, with narrow construction for § 22.7 confidentiality exemptions, though “where the legislature has used broadly inclusive language in the exception, [courts] do not mechanically apply the narrow-construction rule.” ACLU Foundation of Iowa, Inc. v. Records Custodian, Atl. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 818 N.W.2d 231, 233 (Iowa 2012) (quoting DeLaMater v. Marion Civil Serv. Comm’n, 554 N.W.2d 875, 878 (Iowa 1996)).

Lee County cites Iowa Code § 22.7(11), which permits government bodies to maintain “personal information in confidential personnel files” as confidential, with the exception of five categories of information which remain subject to disclosure. Iowa’s Supreme Court has described § 22.7(11) as a “categorical exemption” for which the legislature “has performed its own balancing and made the policy choice to protect such records categorically.” Mitchell v. City of Cedar Rapids, 926 N.W.2d 222, 234 (Iowa 2019).

As a preliminary matter, courts do not interpret the “confidential personnel files” qualifier as a strict location requirement. The dispositive case, Des Moines Independent Community School District v. Des Moines Register & Tribune Co., held job performance evaluations for school district employees could be kept confidential under § 22.7(11) as “personal information in confidential personnel records,” despite the fact the documents were stored with files pertaining to an ongoing investigation. 487 N.W.2d 666, 670 (Iowa 1992). In reaching this decision, the Court emphasized “[t]he nature of the record is not controlled by its place in a filing system,” indicating the type of information was what was relevant to the determination of confidentiality. Id. The fact the records sought are contained in personnel files is, therefore, insufficient on its own for applying § 22.7(11).

With that established, the term “personal information in confidential personnel files” is undefined in the Code, and most existing case law interpreting the phrase arises from an earlier version of § 22.7(11), before the section was amended in 2011. Prior to the 2011 amendment, the full text of § 22.7(11) provided confidentiality for “[p]ersonal information in confidential personnel records of public bodies including but not limited to cities, boards of supervisors and school districts.” From 1980 to 2011, the Iowa Supreme Court analyzed this language narrowly, finding that “personal” should be construed to refer only to certain private affairs and business by contrast to a broader interpretation which would exempt as confidential all information specific to a particular employee. See City of Dubuque v. Telegraph Herald, 297 N.W.2d 523, 527 (Iowa 1980). Within this framework, the Court developed a five-factor balancing test, which was used to determine what types of information should be considered sufficiently “personal” in light of the legislature’s failure to define the term in the statute. DeLaMater v. Marion Civil Serv. Comm’n, 554 N.W.2d 875, 879 (Iowa 1996). These factors were listed as follows: “(1) the public purpose of the party requesting the information; (2) whether the purpose could be accomplished without the disclosure of personal information; (3) the scope of the request; (4) whether alternative sources for obtaining the information exist; and (5) the gravity of the invasion of personal privacy.” Id.

The post-2011 version of the exemption, however, has been changed to read: “[p]ersonal information in confidential personnel records of government bodies relating to identified or identifiable individuals who are officials, officers, or employees of the government bodies,” with the exception of five specific categories which are categorically excluded from the confidentiality provisions for employees. This new language, by its plain meaning, would seem to suggest a legislative intent to broaden the scope of the exemption to cover a larger swath of personal information by clarifying “personal” to include information “relating to identified or identifiable individuals,” rather than solely the private affairs of those employees. Although no state appellate court has provided meaningful interpretation of the scope of the current “personal information in confidential personnel records” exemption, the current framework can still be found in ACLU Foundation, which was decided in 2012 based on the pre-amendment text but in light of the modern statutory language. 

In ACLU Foundation, the Court diverged from existing case law, outlining a two-part process for evaluating the § 22.7(11) exemption:

In summary, to determine if required information is exempt under section 22.7(11), we must first determine whether the information fits into the category of “[p]ersonal information in confidential public records." We do this by looking at the language of the statute, our prior caselaw, and caselaw from other states. If we conclude the information fits into this category, then our inquiry ends. If it does not, we will then apply the balancing test under our present analytical framework. 818 N.W.2d at 235. 

In other words, the DeLaMater balancing test became the second step of analysis, following a first-step determination based on statutory interpretation and existing case law, with the goal of honoring the “categorical exemption.” Id. Applying its new framework, the Court found the school district could refuse to disclose disciplinary information related to two of its employees, including the “specific consequences they received including duration or amounts of any penalties or consequences.” Id. at 232, 236. In reaching this decision, the Court analogized the records at issue to the performance evaluations found to be “personal information” in Des Moines Register & Tribune Co., as well as cases from other jurisdictions dealing with disciplinary reports. Id. at 235–36.[1] Because case law supported a finding that disciplinary records fell into the category of “personal information in confidential personnel records,” the categorical exemption applied, and the balancing test was deemed unnecessary.

Two Court of Appeals cases have considered § 22.7(11) since ACLU Foundation. In Doe v. University of Iowa, which relied on ACLU Foundation’s framework while also arising from the pre-2011 statutory language, the court found a settlement agreement between a public university and a professor involving the professor’s resignation was not confidential under § 22.7(11)[2], despite the terms of the agreement specifying confidentiality “to the extent permitted by the law.” 2013 WL 85781 at *5. In reaching this result, the court found the agreement was not a clear match for “personal information in confidential personnel records,” as required for the first step of ACLU Foundation, then found in the second step the public’s interest in disclosure outweighed the former professor’s privacy interests under DeLaMater. Id. at *4–5. The other case, State v. Smith, touched on § 22.7(11) only briefly in finding that a police officer’s disciplinary records were presumably confidential under the first step of ACLU Foundation (before considering whether they could be sought in discovery notwithstanding this finding). No. 16-0533, 2017 WL 6033880 (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 6, 2017).

Lee County, asserts the requested police training records are exempt from disclosure under Iowa Code § 22.7(11) as “personal information in confidential personnel records.” In support of their position, the respondent argues “[i]f the legislature wanted to include training records as a personnel record that government bodies should not keep confidential they could have included it with the five exceptions that exist.”

The current statutory direction of Iowa Code § 22.1(11) favors Lee County. The information the complainant seeks – “[f]irearm qualifications training for each deputy . . . to include officer, date, and weapon system trained on” and “[a]nnual training documentation . . . to include officer, training course name, and training hours per each course” – is particular to the identified or identifiable officers who completed the training, and training data belongs to the category of records which would naturally be included with confidential personnel files for individual employees. 

As a possible work-around for the confidentiality issue, the complainant proposed Lee County could redact officer names and other identifying details, which would allow the records to be released anonymously (as Officer #1, Officer #2, etc.). This presents a closer question. Nevertheless, § 22.7(11) specifies that confidential personal information may relate to “identified or identifiable individuals who are officials, officers, or employees” (emphasis added). Redaction would not remove the personal character of the information contained in the personnel records requested, nor would it sufficiently protect the individual employees from being identifiable from the information that remains unredacted.

Because both records requests fall into the categorical exemption for personal information in confidential personnel records found in § 22.7(11), chapter 22 does not require disclosure.

Conclusion

Iowa Code § 23.8 requires that a complaint be within the IPIB’s jurisdiction, appear legally sufficient, and have merit before the IPIB accepts a complaint. Following a review of the allegations on their face, it is found that this complaint does not meet those requirements.

Individual training records of Lee County officers are “personal information in confidential personnel records of government bodies relating to identified or identifiable individuals who are officials, officers, or employees of the government bodies.” As such, these records can be withheld as confidential under Iowa Code § 22.7(11).

IT IS SO ORDERED:  Formal complaint 24FC_0069 is dismissed as legally insufficient pursuant to Iowa Code § 23.8(2) and Iowa Administrative Rule 497-2.1(2)(b). 

Pursuant to Iowa Administrative Rule 497-2.1(3), the IPIB may “delegate acceptance or dismissal of a complaint to the executive director, subject to review by the board.”  The IPIB will review this Order on October 17, 2024.  Pursuant to IPIB rule 497-2.1(4), the parties will be notified in writing of its decision.

By the IPIB Executive Director

_________________________

Erika Eckley, J.D.

[1] Notable in the Court’s review of other jurisdictions’ is an emphasis on whether disciplinary records belonged to the category of records which would generally be included in a personnel file, as opposed to the invasion of privacy concerns or interest balancing which characterized DeLaMater and other pre-2011 case law.

[2] Iowa Code §§ 22.13-22.13A address settlement agreements as public records not subject to confidentiality provisions. Current language for Iowa Code § 22.13 was amended in 2011. Iowa Code 22.13A personnel settlements for state employees was added in 2017.