Coalition president seeks expedited judicial action on Floyd County special election

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A Floyd County group that is asking a judge to require the county to hold a special election regarding supervisor representation, has now asked for an expedited hearing because the usual timeline for holding such an election is drawing close.

Gordon Boge, president of the Coalition for Better County Government, through attorney Michael Byrne, filed a motion in Floyd County District Court on Wednesday, asking for an “expedited temporary order” on its earlier request for a writ to force the Board of Supervisors to schedule the special election.

The action concerns a petition that was turned in to the county commissioner of elections on June 1, calling for a special election to let voters decide in which of three ways they want to be represented by the county supervisors — with all the supervisors elected at-large, as is the current way, or in either of two ways where the county is divided into districts by population and one supervisor is elected from each district.

On June 8, the Board of Supervisors voted to reject the petition because not all of the signature pages contained the petition language and supervisors said they could not be sure that the people who signed the petitions understood what they were signing.

On June 18, Boge’s attorney filed the motion asking for a judge to order the election.

Byrne argued in his original motion and in his motion Wednesday that the supervisors do not have the option under Iowa law to reject the coalition’s petition, and as long as it meets the requirements set out in Iowa Code — which he argues it does — the special election must be scheduled.

Floyd County Auditor Gloria Tjaden, the commissioner of elections, was served notice of the coalition’s original legal action against her and the supervisors on June 18. Linda Tjaden, the current chair of the Board of Supervisors, was served notice on June 21.

As the defendants in the action, Carr and the Board of Supervisors have 20 days after being served to respond, and then “within a reasonable time thereafter file a motion or answer.”

The Board of Supervisors went into closed session during a meeting Thursday morning with Carr, Assistant County Attorney Randall Tilton and Dustin Zeschke, an attorney with the county’s insurance company, EMC Insurance, to discuss strategy regarding the motion filed by the coalition.

The group discussed the topic for about 45 minutes before coming back into open session. No official action regarding the closed part of the meeting was taken Thursday, and after the meeting Tjaden declined to say whether the board had instructed its attorney to answer the coalition’s action.

As of Thursday nothing had been recorded in Floyd County District Court as far as a response by the county.

The reason timing is becoming important, as Byrne noted in his motion this week for an expedited hearing, is if a special election in this matter is held, the Iowa Code requires that it be held on the first Tuesday in August, or Aug. 3 this year.

“The merits of the Writ should be examined by the Court on an expedited basis to facilitate requirements for notice by publication to the official county newspaper,” Byrne wrote in his motion.

According to the part of the Iowa Code that deals with special elections for supervisor representation, “Notice of the special election shall be published once each week for three successive weeks in an official newspaper of the county, shall state the representation plans to be submitted to the electors, and shall state the date of the special election. The last in the series of publications shall occur not less than four nor more than twenty days before the election.

For a special election to be held on Aug. 3, the last notice of election would have to be published by Friday, July 30, in the Charles City Press, and Wednesday, July 28, in the Nora Springs-Rockford Register. The Press and the Register are the official papers for county publications.

The first of the three weeks of notices would need to be published no later than Friday, July 16, in the Press and Wednesday, July 14, in the Register, so there is less than two weeks to go for a judge to be able to order a special election and meet the required publication schedule.

It is also possible that a judge could order the publication schedule or the election schedule modified.

Petitions for special election for supervisor representation can only be filed in odd-numbered years, and Boge said Thursday that if a judge doesn’t order the election to be held this year, there is little doubt the coalition will be back with another petition in 2023.