11-28-2016 Iowa:Sometimes it’s hard to tell when politicians are grandstanding, pandering to the crowds and playing to the cameras.
It’s hard because such scripted statements may also be grounded in truth and genuine sincerity. Just because there’s sizzle doesn’t mean there’s no steak on the plate. But there are occasions when the words of politicians are completely at odds with their own actions, and the words are revealed to be pure window-dressing.
Take the controversy over Iowa’s practice of placing sex offenders and violent criminals in Iowa care facilities alongside elderly and disabled adults.
For years, Statehouse politicians and Gov. Terry Branstad have decried the situation, wrung their hands and then failed to act — even as vulnerable adults were sexually abused and even murdered by fellow residents known to have posed a threat to others.
Granted, this is not a particularly easy issue to address. Sex offenders and violent criminals age just like the rest of us, and many of them eventually need 24-hour care. Ideally, they would be placed in either a dedicated facility for high-risk individuals, or placed in the secure wing, with close monitoring, of a traditional care facility. Both solutions entail additional spending.
As things stand now, many of these individuals are simply placed with the general population of care-facility residents, with no additional oversight.
Legislators have known about this for years, and they have railed about it but accomplished very little. The governor has been even more complicit, blocking attempts to study the issue so that a workable solution could be proposed. Both the governor and the Legislature appear to be cowed by the powerful and well-funded nursing home lobby.
As the Register’s Tony Leys recently reported, the Iowa Health Care Association, which represents many of the state’s nursing homes, has successfully opposed measures that would simply require homes to notify residents and family members when a registered sex offender moves in.
Steve Ackerson, the head of the IHCA, told Leys that if notification was required, many facilities would accept a sex offender only if the individual was bedridden or near death — and even then that could trigger an exodus of residents. “You might just as well close your facility down,” he says.
That is an absolutely stunning admission for the IHCA to make. The organization’s argument — one that has so far proven persuasive to our bought-and-paid-for state policymakers — is that it’s better for the industry if Iowa families are left in the dark, unaware that grandma is living alongside a sex offender; that it's better to keep grandma in harm's way than to disrupt the operations of a profitable nursing home.
As galling as that is, it pales in comparison to what the state itself is doing. Although the governor has publicly stated he supports mandatory notification, he presides over a state agency that refuses to provide that sort of notification in state-operated care facilities.
For example, officials didn’t notify other residents or their families when a convicted rapist, Donald Wayne Young, was recently transferred to the state-run Woodward State Resource Center. Young joined seven other registered sex offenders living at Woodward, which serves people with intellectual disabilities. Young has actually served prison time for beating and raping a supervisor at a similar state-run facility 13 years ago.
Why weren’t families told? A spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Human Services, which runs Woodward, says state law forbids employees from telling residents at state facilities about other residents.
That law could easily be changed to allow — or better yet, require — DHS to share what is already public information: an individual’s status as a registered sex offender. Common sense dictates that DHS should be able to share with families and residents the same information the Iowa Department of Public Safety is required by law to post on its website for everyone to see.
And yet, that is not happening.
So when Gov. Branstad said in 2011 that the state needs to "always err on the side of openness and victim notification in making sure people are aware of the potential risks that are out there," was he sincere or just pandering?
We’d like to give the governor the benefit of the doubt — but it has been five years and vulnerable Iowans are no less at risk now than when he made those comments. ..Source.. by The Register's Editorials
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