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When Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and their pals set their quill pens to parchment to write the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Decatur County, Iowa, was still a half century off in the future.
Now, 236 years later, the county’s top law enforcement official needs a refresher on the intent of those 45 words the Founding Fathers settled on in the opening of the Bill of Rights.
County Attorney Alan Wilson ought to review three of the five fundamental freedoms the First Amendment protects — the freedoms of speech, of the press, and to petition the government for a “redress of grievances.”
Exercising those rights is exactly what Rita Audlehelm of Van Wert did in a letter to the editor the Leon Journal-Reporter published on Feb. 5.
Audlehelm is aggrieved, as our Founding Fathers would call it. She wants redress of her grievances — for the absence from the courthouse in Leon of one of three elected county supervisors.
Steve Fulkerson has not attended in person most board meetings since last October, even though each Decatur County supervisor is paid $32,120 annually. (The county attorney will be paid $65,638 this year, an Iowa State Association of Counties salary survey says.)
So, Audlehelm spoke by letter to the local newspaper.
“Did you know that the last 17 BOS (Board of Supervisors) meetings since 9/30/2024, Supervisor Fulkerson has attended just one meeting (12/23/2024) in person?” she wrote. “There have been 8 call-ins by Fulkerson to meetings, the majority of those calls have been short, only long enough to address one issue, and some resulting in a dropped call.”
The same day the Journal-Reporter printed Audlehelm’s letter, Wilson wrote to her on official county attorney stationery, with copies to the three supervisors, and sent his letter by certified mail.
His delivery method signaled to the 73-year-old retired school nurse that she better pay special attention to the letter’s contents.
Wilson demanded, “This letter serves as your Notice to Cease and Desist from making any further false, misleading, or defamatory statements against any elected official of Decatur County.”
He warned her, “I am advising the Board of Supervisors to speak with their private legal counsel about the defamatory statements you have made against them, particularly if you don’t retract these false, misleading, and defamatory statements immediately.”
The reputations of elected county officials hardly were sullied by this one taxpayer, and her letter certainly did not spread any deliberate falsehoods. Even if her comments and questions hurt the feelings of county supervisors, the prosecutor had no business lecturing her or making a not-so-subtle threat of possible legal action against her.
The timing of Wilson’s letter is ironic, considering the climate in our nation when our new president has a history of referring to government officials and employees as morons, crooks, frauds, birdbrains, sleazy, deranged and swamp-dwellers. The president’s promise to stop government lawyers from weaponizing the judicial system makes Wilson’s letter even more out of step.
Just as our president has the right to malign those with whom he disagrees, Rita Audlehelm can freely criticize her county attorney and her three county supervisors, even if her criticism annoys or aggravates them.
Audlehelm used neither sticks nor stones to make her point. She merely posed questions that others among the county’s 7,700 residents were asking, too:
“Why are you not attending Board of Supervisors meetings and the committee meetings assigned to you?”
“How would you address a 60-day absence taken by any other elected official in Decatur County?”
Audlehelm ended her letter by saying, “I urge the citizens of Decatur County to remain engaged in your county government and the services that are rendered by those county employees that show up every day to do the work they were elected to do.”
Democracies falter when citizens lose interest or cannot ask questions, seek answers, and make comment without fearing government reprisal against them.
So, when an elected official pursues a taxpayer for her fair comment and criticism, it seems like a strange way to protect and defend the Constitution.
Naval hero Decatur, the county’s namesake, gave his life for free-speech convictions
Decatur County Attorney Alan Wilson should put aside his attempt to intimidate taxpayer Rita Audlehelm and study the biography of his county’s namesake.
Decatur County bears the last name of Stephen Decatur, a decorated U.S. Navy commodore who fought on the shores of Tripoli in the years after the American Revolution and once commanded the USS Constitution.
Decatur was a man of words, deeds, and conviction.
He was on a naval panel that court-marshaled Commodore James Barron for “unpreparedness” in an 1807 incident in which a British ship captured a frigate under Barron’s command.
Barron later sought reinstatement, but Decatur opposed that in strongly worded letters to government officials. Barron claimed Decatur slandered him and sought a retraction. Failing that, Barron then demanded a duel.
Following the custom of the time, Decatur accepted the challenge rather than retract his statements.
So, on a morning in March 1820, facing one another eight paces apart with pistols drawn, Barron and Decatur both fired their guns and hit their targets.
Barron lived. Decatur did not.
The cost of free speech for Stephen Decatur was his life.
A final note: Iowa’s founders, along with protecting speech, press and petition rights in the Iowa Constitution, included a provision disqualifying anyone who engaged in a duel from ever holding public office.
Rita Audlehelm might be interested to know Iowans repealed that ban in 1992.
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