Dead Lives Matter

Bureaucratic Pains

Iowa has great people and good government employees. Yet, like any large-scale organization, problems, and inconsistencies appear. What happens to the front office worker often never reaches those making decisions. Those with the knowledge, do not make the decisions, and those making the decisions, often do not have the knowledge they think they have.

With government, conflicting rights and interests must be balanced out or countered. This is normal, yet when the government becomes so large and complex: irritation, annoyance, and obstructions arrive. When government employees cannot provide an explanation of the conflicts in their own processes and how to resolve them, they begin to look incompetent, mean, irrational, and worthless. This is particularly true when they have no understanding of what other government organizations are doing.

I was trying to obtain a death certificate for John Wesley Mapes, a relative, who died in 1898 and is buried in Fremont County. The County office there says they do not see any record and advised I contact the State. I contacted the Iowa Health Department which is often the default source for people to contact. The Health Department stated I had to file a document of entitlement. (This form is hard to locate on their site.) They cite Iowa law, Chapter 95, and Section 85.8 law to justify this. However, this document amounts to Iowa’s stairway to hell. An altered image of the form appears below.

However, this means I cannot get the certificate, at least not from the Health Department, because this is my second great grand uncle. At the same time, they fail to refer to the Iowa Historical Society which has a different approach and more lenient policies for access to documents. Officials at the Iowa State Historical Society say this document/certificate is in the public domain and I should not be required to provide entitlement and cite Iowa Code 144.43 as Mapes died not just 20 years ago, but 120 years ago. Yet, I did not have a real resolution as to how to obtain the document I was seeking and the Health Department was still saying something along the lines of “Oh, hell, no way are we going to let you have this document”, yet the document may not even exist!

I contacted the Iowa Attorney General's office and asked them if they could consider a ruling over what law takes precedence, or explains the difference. This seems to be a reasonable request for the Attorney General to do: explain which government policies take precedence. Nope, they refused to offer any worthy assistance whatsoever. They referred me to the Iowa Public Information Board, yet another government organization.

I contacted the Iowa Public Information Board, they informed me this was out of their jurisdiction per Chapter 22. I guess public information is just not as important as the name of such an office implies.

I eventually found a contact form made possible by the Department of Cultural Affairs, yet another government office. I have made the request for this death certificate, as many others can, through this link: https://history.iowa.gov/history/research/state-government-record-management/iowa-open-records

Yes, genealogy is a challenge. Got to be smart. Got to be persistent. Got to stop walking stairways to hell!

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A story:

A man is driving his car and he encounters a stop sign and stops his car.  He sits and waits, and waits and waits.

There is no traffic preventing him from going forward, but more and more cars, filled with impatient drivers, are behind him.

Eventually, a police officer shows up and asks the man: "Are you ok?"

The man says, "Yes, I am fine."

Officer: "Well, why don't you drive forward?"

The man says, "I can't do that."

The officer asks; "Why not?"

The man says, "I am waiting on the sign to say "go'."