Senate watchdog panel has been muzzled, member says

The Iowa Senate's top watchdog committee has been muzzled, a leading member of the panel complained this week.

The Senate Government Oversight Committee, which has authority to investigate problems in state agencies, hasn’t held any hearings this year.

“We have people who clearly hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil,” said Sen. Matt McCoy, who is the top-ranked Democrat on the panel. McCoy, who is from Des Moines, has requested several hearings. The topics he wants the committee to investigate include staff abuse of severely disabled residents at a state institution, allegations that Iowa State University’s president improperly used a university plane, and the reported failure of state child abuse investigators to intervene before the starvation death of a West Des Moines teenager.

McCoy has been rebuffed by Sen. Michael Breitbach, a Strawberry Point Republican who is the committee’s chairman. “There’s nothing in this state he wants to investigate,” McCoy said in an interview.

McCoy’s latest request was for a hearing about troubles at the Glenwood State Resource Center. Thirteen workers at the state institution were fired or quit and six were arrested last month after allegations that they mistreated residents with severe intellectual disabilities. State inspectors reported in January that some staff members struck residents in the head or humiliated them, including by calling them “retards.”

Breitbach denied McCoy’s request for a hearing into the scandal. In a letter to the Des Moines Democrat last week, Breitbach said the Department of Human Services, which runs the Glenwood institution, should send legislators a written report about improvements it has made. However, he wrote to McCoy, “holding a public hearing does not help the situation, does not help the residents and in fact becomes a platform for those that want to politicize this horrific lack of professional care.” McCoy gave the Des Moines Register a copy of the letter.

In a brief Statehouse interview this week, Breitbach said he has no intention of holding a hearing about how the Department of Human Services responded to the Glenwood scandal. “It’s my prerogative,” he told a reporter. “I think it’s been handled appropriately.”

He declined to answer other questions, including why his committee has held no hearings this year and what he believes the panel's purpose is.

Over the previous four years, when Democrats controlled the chamber, the Senate's Government Oversight Committee averaged about eight meetings a year, according to figures provided by Secretary of the Senate Charles Smithson. The committee regularly held hearings about alleged problems in agencies run by appointees of Gov. Terry Branstad, who is a Republican. For example, it looked into hundreds of thousands of dollars in over-payments of unemployment benefits last year. In 2015, its hearings included a look at Branstad's controversial decision to close two state mental hospitals.

Control of the Senate shifted this year to Republicans. The corresponding committee in the Iowa House of Representatives, which also is controlled by Republicans, has met four times so far this year.

McCoy said the Senate committee's investigation into the Glenwood scandal should include why no managers were sanctioned. The state inspectors' report from January suggested the facility's leaders shared blame for the abuse. “The facility failed to ensure the development and implementation of adequate systems to identify and prevent abuse and/or mistreatment of clients,” the inspectors’ report said. “The facility failed to proactively assure clients were free from threats to their physical and psychological health."

A private consulting company that looked into the Glenwood scandal also raised questions about why no supervisors were disciplined for lax management. “The supervisors and administrators have a responsibility to ensure their supervisory duties are adequate to ensure safety of the client and the staff. There is no documentation as to why only direct staff are determined in need of corrective action,” according to the consultants’ report, which the Register obtained this month under the state’s open-records law.

The Department of Human Services, which paid up to $65,000 for the consultants’ report, has said its internal investigation determined no supervisors were at fault for the problems. But the department has said it’s ramping up supervision at the institution, including at night and on weekends.

McCoy said he intends to independently ask Department of Human Services staff members to come to the Statehouse to discuss the Glenwood situation. But such a session would lack the depth and prominence of a formal hearing by the Senate Government Oversight Committee. McCoy held an informal hearing Monday on the department's response to reports that a West Des Moines girl, Natalie Finn, was being abused and neglected. Finn starved to death Oct. 24.