Dive Brief:

• The Iowa Board of Regents has released more than 150 settlement agreements with state university employees, revealing more than $1.3 million in payouts since 2011.
• The records show that the $1.3 million was spent on roughly three dozen lump-sum payments, The Associated Press reported. The figure doesn’t include dozens of reimbursements for back pay after suspensions had been lifted or cases when employees stayed on the payroll after their duties were cut.
• Of the three public universities in Iowa, the University of Iowa had the largest employee settlement price tag, at $866,000, and the most payments.

Dive Insight:

Kudos to the AP, which made the request that led to the divulging of the settlement agreements. In Iowa, legal settlements are public records, but many of the university settlements included confidentiality clauses for both parties. The secrecy undoubtedly led to some sweetheart deals and the covering up of disputes that would have embarrassed the universities. Not all of the settlements were from disputes — some were for employees transitioning to retirement. For example, a 2012 agreement paid an assistant football coach $150,000 for a one-year staff position. And the most expensive settlement was paid to a tenured pathology professor, who was paid $275,000 after agreeing to early retirement in 2012.