Supervisors Revisit Airport Board Appointment

Mahaska County Supervisors for August 6, 2012

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Mahaska County Supervisors again revisited the appointment, that they recently made, to the new Regional Airport Board.

Joe Warrick was appointed to serve on the Regional Airport Board, but the issue of gender balancing, at the time of his appointment and again now, brought on a motion by Supervisor Chairman Greg Gordy to remove Warrick and replace him with Margaret Ratcliff. This became the focal point of Monday’s meeting.

The airport board is made up of six members and Ratcliff would help in making the board gender balanced. Three members were appointed from Pella, two more from the City of Oskaloosa and the sixth was from Mahaska County.

Gordy cited an email from the assistant county attorney that stated, “After speaking with Rose Ann [County Attorney] it is of our opinion you will need to reconsider your appointment. Our suggestion is to approach the male appointee, explain the legal requirements and ask him to resign his position. If he is unwilling, you should place the item on an agenda and make the appropriate motions at that time.”

Gordy explained that he put the item on the agenda to help define where the county was in the process of either having Warrick remain, or go in favor of Ratchliff, saying that “we should follow the recommendation of the county attorney’s office.”

Rozenboom stated that he had previously had conversations with the assistant and the county attorney, “there’s also a provision in here that you were required to pick the most qualified. Well in this case, those two requirements conflict with each other. We can’t pick both the best qualified and the female. I’ve had conversations with both the county attorney and the assistant and they agree there’s a grey area there and that the regulations do conflict with each other and I see no reason to change it.”

The question was raised why it fell upon the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors to gender balance the board. Pella has three appointees to the board, and the City of Oskaloosa has two.

Gordy said, “Possibly because we went last.”

“We didn’t have a chance to go first,” was Rozenboom’s response.

“Yes we did, I had it on the agenda back in March several times and we kept tabling it for quite a while,” Gordy stated.

Rozenboom responded, “No, as soon as we advertised the position, as I recall that moved as quickly as it possibly could have. We had to advertise for it which we did. We acted on it as soon as that deadline had come and gone. We had the applications, we acted on it the next meeting. There was no other time to speed our process up.”

Gordy once again pointed out that since the county went last, he believes that it’s the counties responsibility to gender balance the board.

Rozenboom made his position known that the county had no other choice but to go last on it’s ability to appoint a member to the board.

“So that’s why we have to appoint a female then, if we didn’t have any choice. That was the basis for that,” Gordy said in response.

Gordy made the motion to appoint Margaret Ratcliff to the board, replacing the current male appointee Joe Warrick. The motion died when both Rozenboom and Van Weelden didn’t support the motion.

A quick search of past agendas show that on March 5th of this year, “Set time & date for Public Hearing – 28E Agreement Airport” appeared on the agenda. At that point the agreement between the three government bodies was still unclear if it would make it through the public hearing process.

The March 21st meeting agenda shows, “Public Hearing to consider a 28E Agreement between the City of Oskaloosa, City of Pella and Mahaska County for the joint acquisition, construction, equipping, use, expansion and operation of an airport facility.”

On the May 7th agenda for the supervisors states, “Appointment – Regional Airport Board”. The application deadline was May 1st, 2012 after publication of the opening had been completed.

Further examination of the May 7 meeting shows that appointment to the board was tabled until the next meeting because Rozenboom and Van Weelden stated they had not seen the applications. “We haven’t even seen the applications until 30 seconds ago.” was Rozenboom’s comment to Gordy.

The same arguments expressed during the most recent August meeting were heard at the May 21st meeting with Gordy pointing out the legal advice he had received in regard to gender balancing the board.

“I don’t understand why we, with one representative, have to be the one to balance it out.” VanWeelden said at the May 21 meeting. “That doesn’t make sense to me. I think we need to appoint who would represent us the best on there and not just because they are a man or a woman.”

• March 5, 2012 Supervisor Meeting – Read more from that meeting HERE.
• March 21, 2012 Supervisor Meeting – Read more from that meeting HERE.
• May 7, 2012 Supervisor Meeting – Read more from that meeting HERE.
• May 21, 2012 Supervisor Meeting – Read more from that meeting HERE.

Iowa’s Gender Balance Law (69.16A) reads as follows, “1. All appointive boards, commissions, committees, and councils of the state established by the Code, if not otherwise provided by law, shall be gender balanced. No person shall be appointed or reappointed to any board, commission, committee, or council established by the Code if that appointment or reappointment would cause the number of members of the board, commission, committee, or council of one gender to be greater than one-half the membership of the board, commission, committee, or council plus one if the board, commission, committee, or council is composed of an odd number of members. If the board, commission, committee, or council is composed of an even number of members, not more than one-half of the membership shall be of one gender. If there are multiple appointing authorities for a board, commission, committee, or council, they shall consult each other to avoid a violation of this section.”