Iowa expands do-not-hire list despite controversy

Iowa has added 67 people to its "do-not-hire" list in the past year through a process that a legislator and some public employee advocates believe is unethical or illegal.

The state now maintains a list of 943 people who are ineligible to work for some or all executive branch departments or agencies, records obtained last week by The Des Moines Register show.

State officials insist the list is important to help protect the public and keep problematic employees off Iowa's payroll.

But critics contend the process leads to arbitrary and inconsistent decisions that create inherent inequities among some former employees.

"I really think we're getting ourselves set up for a lawsuit," said Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, who this year led an unsuccessful legislative effort to limit Iowa's use of the so-called "blacklist."

The debate centers on due process.

Some former workers have said they didn't know their separations from the state would result in being added to the list preventing them from being eligible for future state employment.

In some cases the former employees had voluntarily resigned and maintain that leaving their jobs was not the result of final disciplinary action.

State leaders for months denied such lists existed, despite widespread allegations that worker rights were being consistently violated.

DATABASE: Search state's do-not-hire list

After ongoing pressure from media and some legislators, the Iowa Department of Administrative Services — better known as DAS — released in April 2014 the list of 975 names of workers disqualified since 1990 from future state employment because they were fired or resigned.

The publication of the list was followed by government oversight hearings and a lawsuit filed by Des Moines attorneys Roxanne Conlin and Tom Duff on behalf of three former employees.

Seventy-seven others last year expressed interest in joining the lawsuit had it become a class-action complaint against the state.

As a result, Iowa yanked 91 names from the list less than a month after the lawsuit, dozens of them because the DAS determined their separations from the state didn't meet the legal criteria.

The lawsuit was dismissed in October, but Conlin and Duff contend that future litigation is possible, particularly if the state's practices continue.

Conlin and Duff have argued that people who are found to be guilty of serious crimes or professional malfeasance deserve to be on the list. But they also believe that many — if not the majority — of the people on the list were added for relatively innocuous reasons, such as tardiness that might be explained, or might be undeserving of a lifetime unemployment ban.

"It's draconian that an innocuous workplace issue could follow you forever in every job in the state," Duff said. "And there also ought to be some uniformity about what sort of offense gets you put on the list."

Newton resident Sarah Zaruba told the Register this week that she voluntarily resigned her position as a correctional officer at Iowa's prison in Newton for personal reasons following the February death of her husband.

She was added to the state's do-not-hire list in April, which she believes is unjustified.

Zaruba, who had worked for the state for 17 years, noted that the general process to launch an administrative appeal of an Iowa do-not-hire listing involves first applying for a job and waiting for the state to reject the application. It's unlikely the position would remain open throughout an appeal, which means lost opportunity for someone who was unfairly added to the list, she said.

Iowa's do-not-hire list began in 1987, during Gov. Terry Branstad's first term as governor. The practice essentially remained the same since, Michelle Minnehan, a human resources officer, testified before lawmakers last year.

Caleb Hunter, a spokesman for the Iowa DAS, said last week that the department will review anyone's status on the list upon request.

The list is part of data drawn from personnel files and is intended to protect the public, he said.

"It's important for DAS to protect taxpayers' interest and not pass around employees that have a known malfeasance from one agency to another," Hunter said.

LEGISLATIVE SOLUTION FAILS TO PASS HOUSE

The Iowa Senate this year passed a measure in a 35 to 11 vote to limit the use of the state's do-not-hire list. The bill, Senate File 332, died in the House where it failed to make its way through the legislative process.

Here are a few of the highlights of the bill:

• A person may be considered ineligible to apply for a state job for set reasons. Some of those reasons include if the applicant knowingly misrepresented facts on such documents as a job application, have been terminated for creating a hostile work environment in a previous state position, or convicted of a crime that would have a direct relationship to the position they desire.

• Iowa's state government would be required to notify a person within five business days following their designation on the do-not-hire list.

• The state must provide information to applicants placed on the do-not-hire list about how they may appeal.

SUPREME COURT IMPLICATIONS

A judge in October dismissed the lawsuit against the state's do-not-hire list, saying workers must appeal through the executive branch.

But more options to seek damages from the state might be made available pending an ongoing case involving Iowa's former workers' compensation commissioner Chris Godfrey.

In the Godfrey case, the Iowa Supreme Court is being asked whether he can invoke the Iowa Constitution to win monetary damages following Gov. Terry Branstad's decision to cut his annual salary by roughly $40,000.

If Godfrey is successful, the case could open the door for people who believe they've been wrongly added to Iowa's do-not-hire list to seek damages from the state, Godfrey's attorney Roxanne Conlin said.