It shouldn’t take a team of lawyers, tens of thousands of dollars and years of work to figure out whether police should turn over records when they accidentally kill someone.

The lack of clarity in Iowa’s open records law has led to an inexplicable situation where local officials can more or less decide whether to engage in a cover-up, with few or no consequences.

When next they gather in Des Moines, state lawmakers must act to strip ambiguity from Chapter 22 of the Iowa Code, which governs public access to government records, and at the same time scrap the Kafkaesque Iowa Public Information Board, which has made a mockery of the concept of transparency — in both its own deliberations and its commitment to openness. It’s been nearly three years since an unarmed Burlington mother named Autumn Steele was accidentally shot and killed by a police officer on the sidewalk outside her home, and the public today is no closer to securing the release of the records in her case than it was in January 2015.

To be fair, The Iowa Public Information Board was founded with the best of intentions.

The selling point was that there would be journalists and members of the public on the board, which could provide quick relief to taxpayers who were illegally denied access to public records, avoiding messy, expensive and drawn-out lawsuits.

But rather than hold government officials accountable, the board itself has, in a sad irony, bucked basic accountability standards by holding secret meetings and secret votes, including one held on Friday.

Yes, you read that right. The taxpayer-funded board tasked with ensuring transparency is engaged in practices that are about as transparent as a locked filing cabinet.

Far from offering quick resolutions when local officials try to cover up issues of public interest, certain matters brought before the board instead have dragged on and on.

After Friday’s secret meeting, the Des Moines Register filed a complaint with the board about the board’s own behavior, asking it to make a recording of the secret meeting immediately available, fine each of its members $1,000 and make a public apology.

Don’t hold your breath.

Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, called the board’s behavior laughable.

“The Iowa Public Information Board was established to help improve transparency and public access to government records and meetings,” said Evans. “But the board showed today that it hardly is in a position to be telling other government bodies how they should handle public records and public meetings. The board’s conduct today undermines its own credibility and respect and was a sadly laughable example of transparency.”

Michael Giudicessi, who has represented The Hawk Eye in its efforts to overturn police decisions to withhold records from the public, wasn’t laughing.

“Today’s decision by the Iowa Public Information Board to proceed as discussed in a secret session, without providing the public further details of what its members discussed or decided behind closed doors, is breathtaking in its audacity,” Giudicessi said.

In its own tortured way, Iowa is providing taxpayers with an excellent reminder of what often happens when you put the government in charge of determining whether it’s following its own laws.

Even if the meetings and votes were held in public, as they should be, the proceedings would be questionable at best.

Lawyers employed by the Iowa Attorney General are working for both the prosecution and the defense in the Steele case, placing the state in the position of arguing both for and against the release of records in her killing.

But while the board’s actions stand in stark contrast to the spirit of transparency that birthed it, the real problem here isn’t the inexcusable behavior of this particular group of people.

It’s the underlying law that fails to carve out explicit standards for which records should be public and when.

Iowa needs a clear law that doesn’t give public officials the option to hide records. And it needs transparent, swift and harsh punishment for government officials who fail in their duty to safeguard the public’s right to information about how our government operates.

If lawmakers truly believe in the public’s right to know, then the Iowa Public Information Board would be properly relegated to the dustbin of history.

The Hawk Eye