Six questions about the governor's staff blocking me from a budget briefing

A viral moment

Gov. Reynolds’ press secretary closing the door on me

This original reporting and analysis first appeared at Bleeding Heartland and is shared here as part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. For regular emails linking to all recent Bleeding Heartland articles and commentary, subscribe to the free Evening Heartland newsletter.

For most of the time Kim Reynolds has served as governor, her staff have tried to limit my access to information and news conferences available to other statehouse reporters. This week, the governor’s press secretary blocked me from attending a briefing a few hours before Reynolds delivered her Condition of the State address.

The video of my encounter with Mason Mauro on January 13 was shared widely and generated hundreds of comments across my social media feeds. Many readers, followers, and well-wishers (plus a few trolls) have asked about the incident—far too many for me to answer individually.

I’m addressing the most frequently asked questions below.

For those who haven’t seen the video, here’s what happened when I tried to follow other reporters into the January 13 meeting.

What was this briefing about?

The “state budget preview” is a background briefing for a select group of statehouse reporters. Journalists who attend receive a budget book containing an advance copy of the governor’s Condition of the State (embargoed until Reynolds begins delivering the remarks). That gives reporters time to write most of their summary articles before Reynolds arrives at the Iowa House chamber around 6:00 pm.

The budget book contains much more than the prepared speech. Over about 20 pages, the book lays out the policies Reynolds will ask the legislature to approve in 2026. This year, there are short descriptions of the governor’s plans for property tax reform, health care, education, agriculture, veterans’ services, and public safety.

At the briefing, senior staff members walk through the key proposals and answer questions. It’s off the record, meaning reporters can’t quote staffers or take audio or video recordings. But they can ask questions and take notes on what they hear. That’s a godsend when you’re dealing with a complicated subject like property taxes.

The budget book also contains a review of the state’s economy and fiscal outlook, and beginning on page 86, tons of detail about the governor’s state budget request for fiscal year 2027. For each line item, columns show actual spending from FY 2025, projected current year spending, how much funding the relevant department requested for FY 2027, and what the governor is asking legislators to approve.

The Iowa Department of Management posts the book online after the Condition of the State, but it’s a big advantage to be able to leaf through it ahead of time.

Why didn’t they let you in?

As you can see from the video, Mason Mauro didn’t give me a straight answer. The Robert Ray Conference Room can accommodate dozens of people, so space constraints were not the issue.

Iowa Starting Line’s Zachary Oren Smith repeatedly asked this question. Mauro told him eleven media outlets were invited to the briefing but didn’t explain why I was excluded.

This kind of decision would be made well above the pay grade of the press secretary/deputy communications director. At minimum, communications director Heather Nahas would need to approve the media invitations. More likely, chief of staff Taryn Frideres would sign off on the list, or possibly the governor herself.

The Reynolds administration consistently blocked my access to the governor’s news conferences for years, under multiple press secretaries and chiefs of staff. So it’s no surprise they would keep me out of this room.

Aside from the psychic satisfaction of making it harder for me to do my job—many viewers noted the smug look on Mauro’s face—they can avoid letting me question staff directly about anything in the budget book. I have done extensive investigative reporting on the governor’s office budget since 2019 (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). So I might bring up topics they don’t want to discuss, even on background.

It’s easier to ignore an email seeking clarification than to ignore a question asked in front of other reporters.

At least two other journalists were not invited to the budget preview: Zachary Oren Smith and Jack Hunt, who owns and operates the Iowa Legislative News Service. They were also left off last year’s invitation list. Iowa Starting Line covers politics from a progressive angle, as I do, and they’ve been cut out before. For instance, the governor’s office did not inform Starting Line’s political reporter Ty Rushing or me about a July 2023 press conference to announce early results from Reynolds’ state government reorganization.

Hunt has been covering Iowa’s legislature and state government in granular detail for about 30 years. There’s a good chance he would spot details in the budget book that escaped other reporters’ attention.

Can they do that?

Well, they “can,” because they did. But that doesn’t make their actions constitutional.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 7 of Iowa’s constitution prohibit government officials and government entities from restricting media access based on content or viewpoints. Similarly situated reporters must be treated equally.

Although Mauro described it as a “private office,” the Robert Ray Conference Room is the opposite of a private setting. It’s part of the governor’s office suite, located in the state capitol building, where government employees working for a statewide elected official were discussing matters of public policy about to be presented to the Iowa House and Senate.

This legal memo commissioned by the Institute for Free Speech in 2019 explained why I am “entitled to the same First Amendment protections as ‘traditional’ journalists,” with many case law citations. A more recent case was Alaska Landmine v. Dunleavy, from 2021; a federal judge ordered the Alaska governor to invite independent journalist Jeff Landfield to press conferences.

That doesn’t mean every journalist in Iowa has a right to attend a budget briefing. But it looks like viewpoint discrimination to invite most Iowa Capitol Press Association members, excluding only those with unwelcome perspectives on the Reynolds administration.

Side note: the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in 2021 that Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers did not discriminate against the conservative MacIver News Service when the governor’s office kept MacIver out of invitation-only press events. That case can be distinguished from this situation, because MacIver was “not principally a news organization,” and was affiliated with a think tank that lobbied Wisconsin state government. The lower court ruling had noted that MacIver “has a ‘news’ tab on its website, but it does not maintain a news-gathering organization separate from its overall ideological mission.”

Bleeding Heartland is solely a news organization, and is not affiliated with any entity that lobbies state government. In fact, the Iowa Capitol Press Association’s bylaws do not allow membership for “anyone who produces content for an organization whose primary function is to advocate, lobby, or otherwise influence legislative, executive or judicial decisions.”

Why does it matter? The speech was going to be out in a few hours anyway.

The governor’s speech described some of her ideas in broad outlines. But it was short on specifics about how she would change state policy on property taxes, veterans’ benefits, helping young farmers access land, and so on. At the budget briefing, reporters may have asked about those topics and more. I wish I could have listened.

In addition, Reynolds’ 2026 policy agenda encompasses lots of things she didn’t mention in her televised speech. In the health care area alone, the book lists expanding access to hormonal contraceptives, making ivermectin available over the counter, and creating a state-based health insurance exchange.

I would have asked why expanding access to ivermectin is among the governor’s priorities, and how Reynolds envisions a state-based exchange working. Would it be different from the one Iowa Senate Democrats proposed (and her predecessor, Governor Terry Branstad, rejected) in 2012 and 2013?

The governor’s budget proposal reveals so much more. For example, we learned Reynolds will ask for a 2 percent increase in state aid per pupil for K-12 schools.

I would have liked to ask why Reynolds is seeking about $6 million less for the court system than the Iowa Judicial Branch requested, why she wants to cut about $1.5 million from “Children’s Mental Health School-Based Training and Support,” and why she is not recommending any of the following line items the Board of Regents requested for the state universities:

• an additional $1 million for expanded mental health services

• $3.6 million for a University of Iowa program aimed at increasing physicians in rural Iowa

• $600,000 to expand the nursing program at the University of Northern Iowa

• $1 million for additional cancer research at the University of Iowa

The last point was particularly surprising, given how much time the governor’s speech devoted to fighting cancer.

Why shouldn’t they keep you out? You’re always bashing the governor.

The fact that my reporting has often been critical of Reynolds lends more credence to any viewpoint discrimination claim. The Institute for Free Speech’s 2019 legal memo cites some of the relevant First Amendment case law.

My 2024 lawsuit against the Iowa House chief clerk (which was settled soon after I received credentials in the chamber) covered similar territory.

You may not like my reporting, but I meet the standards for membership in the Iowa Capitol Press Association and have the right to be treated on equal terms as others who regularly produce original reporting about Iowa’s state government. The same principle favors conservative reporters in other contexts. No doubt President Joe Biden’s press secretaries didn’t appreciate many of Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy’s questions.

Why didn’t the other reporters back you up?

On every social media platform, numerous commenters criticized the reporters who stayed for the budget briefing or continued walking into the conference room as I was stopped at the door.

To be clear: I would not ask any journalist to boycott a news event as a show of solidarity with me. My peers had all been assigned to cover a major milestone in the legislative session. Getting an advance copy of the governor’s speech and a heads up on her proposals would be essential for meeting their deadlines and informing their coverage for the rest of the week.

I would expect the Iowa Capitol Press Association to call on all state government bodies and officials to treat members fairly, not arbitrarily restricting access to conference calls or briefings (whether on or off the record). The association did issue a statement in 2021 after Reynolds’ press secretary at the time blocked me from entering one of her news conferences.

My biggest disappointment is that although these budget briefings have been going on since at least Governor Robert Ray’s administration, I never knew about them until last year. In January 2025, I was wondering why so few reporters attended the first meeting of the newly-created Iowa House Higher Education Committee. (I had expected a large media presence there.) As it turned out, almost everyone in the capitol press corps was in the governor’s office suite listening to staff discuss Reynolds’ speech and budget book.

I can advocate for myself—but only if I know what I’m missing.

Had I known about this tradition earlier, I could have started working on gaining access to the budget previews. These things don’t change overnight; it took me five years (and eventually a lawsuit) to land a seat in the Iowa House press gallery.

P.S.—To my knowledge, State Auditor Rob Sand, the likely Democratic nominee for governor, has not excluded Iowa Capitol Press Association members from any of his news conferences or public events. Staff for Sand’s 2026 campaign did not respond to my emails this week asking whether he would promise to allow all statehouse reporters to attend briefings, if he is elected governor.