The legal battle regarding the ISU Foundation’s stance on open records has taken another step forward. A court date for a lawsuit filed against the Foundation has been set for Aug. 20.

Last August, Mark Gannon, a former employee with the College of Agriculture, and Arlen Nichols, a retired Des Moines businessman, filed the suit in response to claims the Foundation refused to provide them with requested records such as minutes of meetings and a list of corporate contributions of more than $25,000.

Gannon said the main goal of the lawsuit is to force these records to be opened. “We believe the Foundation is a quasi-government agency,” Gannon said. “The books ought to be transparent to the public.”

Co-defendant in the lawsuit is the Board of Regents which, Gannon said, has the responsibility of overseeing foundations.

Foundation officials fear the many negative impacts of a plaintiff’s victory.

“The Foundation opposes the lawsuit because it does not protect donors’ privacy and compromises the strategic business decisions that the Foundation must make to secure private funds,” said Ann Wilson, director of communications for the Foundation.

Wilson also said donor contributions could be affected.

“Potentially, donors will not be afforded privacy and, thus, may not feel comfortable giving to the ISU Foundation, or other foundations securing support for government bodies,” she said.

The Foundation recently released a new public information policy that opened up more records, but opponents such as Gannon are still not satisfied.

“A lot of state money goes into the Foundation,” Gannon said. “But once it is in, there is no authority to see full disclosure, only partial disclosure,” he said.

Wilson encouraged interested readers to visit the Foundation’s Web site at www.foundation.iastate.edu to see how much information is already available to the public.

In addition to the lawsuit, a bill was recently introduced to the Legislature which calls for Foundation records to be considered public.

Gannon said similar bills have died in subcommittee, which spurred the lawsuit. “One reason we filed the lawsuit is because the Foundation’s lobbyists worked hard to defeat it,” Gannon said.

Foundation officials have said such legislation and the lawsuit are unnecessary.

“This lawsuit will continue to divert valuable time and resources away from the fundamental mission of the ISU Foundation, which is to provide increasingly important private gift support to the university’s faculty, students and programs,” Wilson said.

Gannon said he wishes scandals, such as the mishandling of the Marie Powers estate in which farmland was sold against a donor’s wishes, could be avoided.

“We just want to prevent future people from doing the same thing,” he said.