Open Records Request Tracker
Public records requests submitted to Johnson County and related agencies regarding the proposed jail bond. Iowa Code Chapter 22 governs public records access. Each request is listed with its custodian, subject, current status, and — when produced — what the documents revealed.
Three separate financial instruments are in play; only one requires voter approval.
- $96M general-obligation bond (Iowa Code §75.1; 60% supermajority required): the jail and Sheriff's Office bond proposed for the November 3, 2026 ballot. As of July 2, 2026, the ballot language has not been adopted; the resolution was deferred to bond counsel. Deadline to adopt: August 26, 2026.
- ≤$600,000 Emergency Basis Building Restoration Loan (Iowa Code §331.443; no voter approval required): one component of an omnibus intent-to-borrow resolution (04-23-26-02, April 23, 2026) totaling $21,743,150 across many separate loan agreements, most of it the County's annual insurance-program financing. The jail-relevant component is a loan agreement "in a principal amount not to exceed $600,000, for the purpose of paying the cost, to that extent, of making emergency basis building restoration to the dilapidated County jail building." Not on the ballot; not part of the $96M figure. This appears to be the annual financing stream behind the stabilization payments (Peak and Axiom are paid from Fund 30), rather than new scope — an inference pending the loan agreement itself.
- ~$2.1M reserve-funded land purchase (July 2, 2026): the Board
approved a purchase agreement for ~35 acres at IWV Road SW & Slothower
Road, Iowa City, at ~$60,000/acre, paid from County reserves. The draft ballot
proposition (Res. 07-02-26) names "acquiring land" as a stated purpose of
the $96M bond; the site is being acquired before any vote. The agreement also
assigns the County a 61.04% minimum share of subdivision master grading and
stormwater detention basin construction, separate from the purchase price.
The 350-foot buffer and the detention basin reduce the buildable area below
the 35-acre gross figure.
Download the executed purchase agreement (PDF).
Watch item: the purchase has begun to appear in the claims registers. The July 9, 2026 register (item C.1.a) pays $10,000 to Hawkeye Title Services LC, memo "Earnest money for real estate purchase - IWV Holdings," naming IWV Holdings as the seller entity. The ~$2.1M balance should appear in a future packet. Open questions: who are the principals of IWV Holdings, when did it acquire the parcel, and at what price relative to the County's ~$60,000/acre?
Open-meetings transparency
Iowa Code Chapter 21 requires governmental bodies to keep minutes of their meetings (§21.3) and to give advance public notice (§21.4). The CJCC Survey Subcommittee — which held four meetings in 2025 to develop the taxpayer-funded survey used in the bond campaign — kept no minutes. In a June 5, 2026 open-records response, Erin Shane, Executive Director of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors Office, wrote: "I did create agendas for the 4 meetings with this working subcommittee but did not keep minutes."
Keeping no minutes for four meetings of a body developing a taxpayer-funded survey used in a bond campaign is, on its face, evidence of a Chapter 21 violation — if the subcommittee qualifies as a "governmental body" under §21.2. That coverage question is the County's available defense and has not been adjudicated. The Iowa Public Information Board (IPIB) is the body that would decide it.
The internal committee Supervisor Green described on July 2 (clip 3693 ~59:45: "has met this week, as we have been doing") now has a name. At the July 9, 2026 CJCC meeting, Shive-Hattery's Michael Lewis said "Monday there was a committee meeting," and Erin Shane, Executive Director of the Board of Supervisors Office, said "we met on Monday internally when we're trying to get everything ready for bond referendum." On July 16, Supervisor Green-Douglass named the body on the record: "Johnson County Sheriff's Office Planning Committee met and communications will be forthcoming. And we will have a website soon that can be accessed." No public notice, agenda, or minutes exists for any of its meetings. A body preparing a bond referendum is operating on the same no-minutes model as the CJCC Survey Subcommittee.
The draft minutes of the July 16 meeting, published for approval on July 23, omit the Supervisor Reports segment in which Green-Douglass spoke. The official record of the meeting does not contain her statement; it exists only on the meeting video and transcript.
A second body appears to operate on the same model: a Community Outreach Subcommittee (Supervisor Remington, clip 3693 ~57:01, discussing branding, survey distribution, and community partners; exact name to be verified). No minutes are publicly available for it either. RR-007 below is the pending request for both bodies' records.
Public awareness campaign
On March 3, 2026, the County registered the domain johnsoncountyjailbond.com and a Squarespace subscription (build URL: rust-grapefruit-rwsz.squarespace.com). The County described the site as being "to educate residents about the existing and proposed new jail facility," to be "released when we are confident the project is moving forward to the November 2026 ballot." The Shive-Hattery "Referendum Services" contract (Amendment 3, $549,000) includes a $30,000 "Public Awareness Campaign" line; the County confirmed "a small amount" has already gone to the website (RR-005).
The contractor administers the campaign calendar. At the July 9, 2026 CJCC meeting, Shive-Hattery's Michael Lewis said: "we do have some planned presentations on the calendar that we've been working through from a public awareness campaign standpoint." On July 16, Supervisor Green-Douglass said "we will have a website soon that can be accessed."
Iowa Code §68A.405A permits factual and educational public communications but prohibits using public funds to expressly advocate for a ballot measure. The site's content is not yet public: as of July 21, 2026, johnsoncountyjailbond.com is password-protected, four and a half months after the March 3 domain purchase.
Emergency-management fallback
The July 2026 schematic for the new building included a room labeled as an EOC (emergency operations center). After a supervisor questioned redundancy with the Joint Emergency Communications Center (JECC) nearby, the room was renamed "situation room." At the July 9, 2026 CJCC meeting, Sheriff Kunkel asked for a backup dispatch console and fallback space for when the JECC is offline, saying: "I'd like to see, and I haven't even talked to the JEC about it."
Neither function belongs to the Sheriff's Office. Emergency management answers to the county Emergency Management Commission under Iowa Code §29C.9: one supervisor, the sheriff, and the mayor of every city in the county; the sheriff holds one seat. 911 dispatch belongs to the JECC's joint 28E board, co-funded by the cities. Johnson County Emergency Management Agency offices are in the JECC building at 4529 Melrose Avenue.
County-wide fallback infrastructure is proposed as part of a bond-funded Sheriff's Office building; funding that space is not discussed.
With the proposed backup location approximately a mile from the primary location, any external event (e.g., a severe storm) that would cause issues at one location is likely to have a similar impact on the other.
Backup dispatch capability is standard practice, and the JECC has had outages; Kunkel said the center went offline and was "completely down" about two years ago. Whether the JECC already has a designated backup answering point is an open item.
| ID | Submitted | Custodian | Subject | Status | Response | What it revealed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RR-001 | 2026-05-13 | Johnson County Board of Supervisors | CSSI Project Proposal and Work Agreement; CSSI focus-group fact sheet; Shive-Hattery Amendment 3 Scope of Work | Produced | 2026-05-13 | Produced: (1) "Jail Quick Facts" fact sheet — 2-page focus-group stimulus containing '2024 ADP was 86' and '$80 Million' cost figure, with placeholder '[Further information to be provided by Erin Shane]'; (2) full CSSI SoW — client signature line blank on executed copy; (3) Shive-Hattery Amendment 3 — deliverables due October 14, 2026 (first day of early voting); client signature line blank. |
| RR-002 | 2026-05-13 | University of Iowa | CSSI IRB determination — HSRD Form for CJCC Evaluation project | Produced | 2026-05-29 | Produced: UIowa HSRD (Human Subjects Research Determination) Form, IRB ID 202503233, PI Cassidy Branch. The form records the university's determination that the CSSI survey/focus-group project is not human subjects research but quality improvement (QI) / program evaluation, citing 45 CFR 46.102(d). The form states the project is not seeking to contribute to 'generalizable knowledge' (HSRD I.5–I.6) and frames the work as data collection for 'internal management' of the CJCC client. Funding is listed as 'Departmental' — the $53,406 county contract is not reflected. Despite the QI classification, the 74% headline finding was publicly released, cited in Board presentations, and used in bond advocacy. Download (PDF) |
| RR-003 | 2026-05-14 | Johnson County Auditor | FY22–27 SC349 (Inmate Housing – Out of County) budget justification and line-item history | Partial | 2026-05-14 | No specific documents produced. County redirected to publicly available budget presentations (IQM2 calendar), the Auditor's Claims Register, and the Sheriff's jail-statistics page. In the response email, the Auditor's representative informally stated: 'that budgeted number has historically been set at around $1 Million dollars simply to allow room in the budget for unforeseen circumstances. Any unspent money reverts to the County.' No written methodology, projection, or justification document was produced for any fiscal year. Requestor's follow-up confirmed the public record is consistent with this characterization and considered the request fulfilled on that basis. |
| RR-004 | 2026-05-26 | Johnson County Board of Supervisors | CJCC Survey Subcommittee meeting records (agendas, minutes, notices) — meetings with CSSI to develop survey instrument and plan focus groups | Partial | 2026-06-05 | Four agendas produced by Erin Shane (BoS Executive Director). No minutes kept. (1) April 9, 2025: overview of project scope and timeline with CSSI; development of survey questions. (2) April 16, 2025: introduction; discuss development of survey questions. (3) April 23, 2025: review updates to survey; discuss development of survey questions; confirmation of next steps. (4) August 18, 2025: CSSI-authored focus group planning meeting — notably different in character from the three April sessions. Reveals focus group sample drawn from survey respondents (n=89: 67 mail, 16 web, 6 phone), stratified by vote stability: stable yes 55, stable no 21, changed vote 4 (3 yes-changers, 1 no-changer), unknown 9. $50 per-participant incentive. Agenda item on 'Development of Questioning Route.' The vote-change stratification — explicitly recruiting participants based on attitude shift — is in direct tension with the UIowa IRB QI classification, which asserted no 'environmental influence' on participants and no generalizable-knowledge intent. |
| RR-005 | 2026-06-03 | Johnson County Auditor | Invoices, purchase orders, and expenditure records for johnsoncountyjailbond.com and related domains; any broader communications/PR engagement covering that work | Produced | 2026-06-15 | Produced: (1–2) Two SquareSpace receipts for the johnsoncountyjailbond.com domain and annual site subscription. (3–5) Three Shive-Hattery invoices (April 2, April 30, May 27, 2026) under the county's 'Referendum Services' contract. The county's response confirmed the site is hosted on SquareSpace and that $30,000 — 5% of the Shive-Hattery contract — is allocated to 'Public Awareness Campaign support services,' which includes the jail bond website. The county stated the site 'will be released when we are confident the project is moving forward to the November 2026 ballot.' |
| RR-007 | — | Johnson County Board of Supervisors | Minutes, agendas, and public notices for the Sheriff's Office / Jail Planning Committee and the Community Outreach Subcommittee referenced at July 2, 2026 formal BOS meeting (clip 3693, ~57:01 and ~59:45) | Draft | — | Two subcommittees referenced by Supervisors at clip 3693: (1) Sheriff's Office / Jail Planning Committee (Green, ~59:45: 'has met this week, as we have been doing'); (2) Community Outreach Subcommittee (Remington, ~57:01, discussing branding, survey distribution, community partners — exact name to be verified against video; auto-transcript garbled it). The first body was named on the record July 16, 2026 by Supervisor Green-Douglass as the 'Johnson County Sheriff's Office Planning Committee' (clip 3705, Supervisor Reports — omitted from the draft minutes); it was also referenced at the July 9, 2026 CJCC (clip 3697): Lewis, 'Monday there was a committee meeting'; Shane, 'we met on Monday internally when we're trying to get everything ready for bond referendum.' No minutes are publicly available for either body. Whether they kept minutes consistent with Iowa Code §21.3 is unconfirmed pending this request. See also RR-004: the CJCC Survey Subcommittee's Executive Director confirmed in writing that no minutes were kept for that body's four meetings. |
Status key: Produced — records received; Partial — some records received, others pending or withheld; Pending — request submitted, awaiting response; Denied — request denied; Draft — request being prepared, not yet submitted.