Advisory Opinion 26AO:0006 - Status of the SUDAS Corporation Under Chapter 21

Advisory Opinion 26AO:0006

DATE: May 21, 2026

SUBJECT: Status of the SUDAS Corporation Under Chapter 21

David Carney
ISU Institute for Transportation
2711 South Loop Drive, Suite 4700
Ames, IA 50010

Dear Mr. Carney,

We are writing in response to your request dated March 10, 2026, seeking an advisory opinion from the Iowa Public Information Board (IPIB) pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 23 and Iowa Administrative Code rule 497-1.3. This advisory opinion answers the question of whether the Board of Directors or Regional Committees of the Statewide Urban Design and Specifications Corporation are governmental bodies subject to the open meetings requirements of Chapter 21.

“Any person may request a board advisory opinion construing or applying Iowa Code chapters 21, 22, and 23. An authorized agent may seek an opinion on behalf of any person. The board will not issue an opinion to an unauthorized third party. The board may on its own motion issue opinions without receiving a formal request.” We note at the outset that IPIB’s jurisdiction is limited to the application of Iowa Code chapters 21, 22, and 23, and rules in Iowa Administrative Code chapter 497. Advice in a Board opinion, if followed, constitutes a defense to a subsequent complaint based on the same facts and circumstances.

FACTS PRESENTED:

The Iowa Statewide Urban Design and Specifications Corporation is a nonprofit incorporated pursuant to Chapter 504A, which develops and maintains uniform design and specification manuals used for public improvements across the state. Although SUDAS standards are not statutorily mandated, many city and county governments across the state have voluntarily adopted the SUDAS manuals for their public projects. Both the SUDAS Standard Specifications Manual and Design Manual are updated on an annual basis.

At time of writing, SUDAS is governed by a thirty-eight-member Board of Directors, with voting representatives appointed from various other stakeholder entities.[1] This board typically meets twice a year to approve changes to the SUDAS Manuals, approve a yearly work plan and budget, and make other administrative decisions for the program. The program is also supported by three Regional Committees (West, Central, and East), each of which meet three times each year to gather input from stakeholders across the state. Proposals for revision and addition to the manuals are first presented at Regional Committee meetings, and changes recommended by a majority of the committees are reviewed by the Board of Directors for final approval to appear in future editions.

The SUDAS program began with the Central Iowa Committee, which was established in the late 1980s by a group of city and county governments in central Iowa for the development of common standards for urban public improvement initiatives within their neighboring jurisdictions. By the turn of the century, the Central Iowa Committee (which had expanded beyond the Des Moines area) began work to convert their manuals into statewide standards. This initiative became known as the SUDAS program and, in 2002, a statewide steering committee was created between the Iowa Department of Transportation, participating cities and counties, and various non-government consultant and stakeholder groups to oversee the program. Iowa State University’s Center for Transportation Research and Education (now known as the Institute for Transportation) was selected to manage the program. Later, in 2004, the then-director of the CTRE incorporated the SUDAS Corporation to carry out this work, with its Board of Directors primarily drawn from the statewide steering committee.

In 2005, the Central Iowa Committee officially transferred ownership of its manuals to the newly formed SUDAS Corporation. Since then, the SUDAS program has been continuously managed by ISU’s Institute for Transportation (InTrans), with its principal office located at ISU Research Park. Outside of its Board of Directors, the SUDAS Corporation is staffed by InTrans personnel, with significant funding from the Iowa Department of Transportation.

QUESTION POSED:

Are meetings of the SUDAS Corporation’s Board of Directors or Regional Committees subject to Chapter 21?

OPINION:

1. Requirements for Chapter 21 to Apply

The statutory open meetings requirements of Chapter 21 apply only to meetings of governmental bodies. In order to qualify as a “governmental body,” an entity must be described by at least one of the definitions presented in Iowa Code § 21.2(1), which currently includes ten categories of governmental body (subsections a through j).

Several of these categories are clearly inapplicable to SUDAS. Neither the Board of Directors nor the three Regional Committees are governing bodies of any political subdivision or tax-supported district (Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(b)), and neither are associated with intercollegiate athletic programs (Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(d)), Chapter 99D pari-mutuel wagering (Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(f)), Chapter 99F gambling games (Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(g)), or the administration of any drainage or levee district under Chapter 468 (Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(i)).

Although the SUDAS Corporation involves the collaboration of various public and private stakeholders, it is not a Chapter 28E entity, meaning also does not apply Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(i)). And, while the push for statewide construction standards was supported in part by the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Transportation, the SUDAS Corporation was not expressly created by state statute or executive order for the purposes of Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(a), nor was it otherwise “created” by the governor or general assembly as an Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(e) advisory body.

This leaves two possible categories:

c. A multimembered body formally and directly created by one or more boards, councils, commissions, or other governing bodies subject to paragraphs “a” and “b” of this subsection.

h. An advisory board, advisory commission, advisory committee, task force, or other body created by statute or executive order of this state or created by an executive order of a political subdivision of this state to develop and make recommendations on public policy issues.          

2. Applicability of Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(c)

For Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(c) to apply, the SUDAS Corporation would need to be “formally and directly created” by one or more qualifying parent bodies described by Iowa Code § 21.2(a) or (b). In this case, there are two potential “creators” which need to be considered.

The first is InTrans, as the SUDAS Corporation was incorporated in 2004 by the CTRE/InTrans Director in his official capacity. InTrans is a university-based research institute covering over a dozen different programs (including SUDAS), under the administration of Iowa State University. Because InTrans is not a board, council, commission, or other governing body “expressly created by the statutes of this state or by executive order” or “of a political subdivision or tax-supported district,” it is not a qualifying entity.

Alternatively, there is a reasonable argument that the SUDAS Corporation was actually “created” by the statewide steering committee, which selected InTrans to manage the SUDAS program and take control of the Manuals from the Central Iowa Committee, then chose its own members to make up most of the initial Board of Directors. While the steering committee did not literally incorporate the SUDAS Corporation,[2] this history appears sufficient to qualify as formal and direct creation, as InTrans acted based on the steering committee’s decision to re-assign oversight of the SUDAS program to them.[3] Assuming for the purposes of this analysis that the steering committee can be said to have “formally and directly created” the SUDAS Corporation, it also would not seem to satisfy either Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(a) or (b), as was not created by statute or executive order and was not the governing body of any political subdivision or tax-supported district.

This leaves another problem, however, in that the steering committee itself seemingly met the definition of Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(c), as a multimembered body formally and directly created by one or more other governmental bodies (i.e. the various cities and counties). The SUDAS Corporation’s Board of Directors was, by both purpose and composition, a direct successor to the steering committee when it was established. While precedent on this point is limited, it would be inconsistent with the purposes of Chapter 21 for a governmental body to be permitted to evade open meetings requirements by sleight of hand – that is, by creating a new entity, appointing its members to the governing board of said entity, and then delegating its powers. Nevertheless, the actual sequence of events which led to the SUDAS Corporation would likely still leave the direct creation element too tenuous to qualify. That is, if 1) the steering committee’s hypothetical status as a governmental body would have been dependent on its own direct creation by the other governmental bodies which established it, 2) CTRE/InTrans created the SUDAS Corporation to handle the responsibilities which had been assigned to them by the steering committee, and 3) the Central Iowa Committee then transferred their control of the Design and Specifications Manuals to the SUDAS Corporation, then the steering committee should be properly understood as a mere mechanism to bridge the gap between the Central Iowa Committee’s local coordination and the SUDAS program’s statewide uniform standards.[4] Given that, the appropriate analysis is found in the previous paragraph.

Furthermore, even if Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(c) could be said to apply on any of the above arguments, the Iowa Supreme Court has held that governmental bodies (other than specified advisory bodies expressly identified by the legislature) only hold meetings subject to Chapter 21 if their deliberations or actions are “in furtherance of any policy-making duty,” based on the separate definition of “meeting” found in Iowa Code § 21.2(2). Mason v. Vision Iowa Bd., 700 N.W.2d 349, 354 (Iowa 2005). Policy-making, for the purposes of open meetings law, means “deciding with authority a course of action,” as opposed to merely “recommending or advising what should be done.” Id. In this case, any power the SUDAS Corporation possesses is the result of voluntary adoption of their standards by other bodies with actual policy-making authority. In practice, this does mean that new material added to their manuals each year automatically becomes policy for those jurisdictions which have fully embraced SUDAS, but the degree of trust given by a decision-maker to a recommendation does not in-and-of-itself transform the recommendation into anything more.

3. Applicability of Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(h)

The Mason standard, discussed in closing above, does not apply to Iowa Code § 21.2(1)(h), as the Mason Court acknowledged the legislative intent to include this type of advisory group despite the implied policy-making duty requirement for all other governmental bodies. Id. at 355.

Given that the SUDAS Corporation’s purpose is to “develop and make recommendations on public policy issues” through the publication of their Design and Specifications Manuals, the question is whether the SUDAS Commission was “created by an executive order of a political subdivision of this state.” No judicial precedent is available interpreting this phrase, but a 1993 Attorney General advisory opinion written shortly after the amendment which added this category suggested that the “use of the term ‘executive order’ [was intended to] confine[] the authority to create such advisory committees to those elected entities with final executive authority for the political subdivision, rather than restricting the manner in which such advisory committees are created.” Op.No. 93-11-5, 1993 Iowa Op. Att’y. Gen. 59 at *2 (1993). To give effect to legislative intent, “executive order” should therefore be read to encompass any “comparable enactment” by the bodies possessing final executive authority for a political subdivision, like a city council or county board of supervisors. Id. at *3.

For similar reasons to those given in the prior section, the SUDAS Corporation does not qualify. Neither InTrans nor the statewide steering committee are executive authorities of political subdivisions, and the political subdivisions which formed the Central Iowa Committee or the statewide steering committee cannot be said to have created the SUDAS Corporation by executive order.

Because there is no definition of governmental body which applies to the SUDAS Corporation’s Board of Directors or Regional Committees, this analysis concludes that neither group is subject to the open meetings requirements of Chapter 21.

BY DIRECTION AND VOTE OF THE BOARD:
Althea Cole
Joan Corbin
E.J. Giovannetti
Barry Lindahl
Catherine Lucas
Luke Martz
Monica McHugh
Jackie Schmillen

SUBMITTED BY:
Alexander Lee
Agency Counsel
Iowa Public Information Board

ISSUED ON:

May 21, 2026

Pursuant to Iowa Administrative Rule 497-1.3(3), a person who has received a board opinion may, within 30 days after the issuance of the opinion, request modification or reconsideration of the opinion. A request for modification or reconsideration shall be deemed denied unless the board acts upon the request within 60 days of receipt of the request. The IPIB may take up modification or reconsideration of an advisory opinion on its own motion within 30 days after the issuance of an opinion.

Pursuant to Iowa Administrative Rule 497-1.3(5), a person who has received a board opinion or advice may petition for a declaratory order pursuant to Iowa Code section 17A.9. The IPIB may refuse to issue a declaratory order to a person who has previously received a board opinion on the same question, unless the requestor demonstrates a significant change in circumstances from those in the board opinion.