Iowa Local Government Decision Lookup & Fact Check

Local Government Decision Lookup & Fact Check (Iowa)

Check what a city council or county board actually decided, using the official minutes. Give it a claim, an address, or a topic. You get back the matching recorded votes with the outcome, the tally, who voted no, the dollar amount, and links to the minutes and the Citizen Wire page. Claims get a verdict: supported, contradicted or no_record.

Built on Citizen Wire records and official minutes from city and county portals (CC BY 4.0). citizenWireUrl is null for places not yet on Citizen Wire; minutesUrl always points to the official minutes.

When to use this tool

• A user or article says "X city approved Y". You want to confirm it, along with the vote and who dissented, before repeating it.
• You need every recorded decision that mentions a street or address, such as rezonings, plats, licenses or hearings on "Center Street".
• You want the recorded decisions on a topic, like Flock cameras, water rates or rezoning, in one covered city.

When NOT to use it

• The place isn't covered (listed below). You get status: not_covered, which is free, and nothing is confirmed or denied.
• You need live or same-day results. This tool reads a snapshot, so check snapshotDate.
• You need discussion, public comment or video. Use a transcript tool such as City Council & Public Meeting Transcripts.
• State, federal or school board decisions aren't covered.

Coverage (snapshot 2026-10-24)

82 Iowa governments (57 of 99 counties, 25 cities), 21,097 recorded votes, meetings from January 2026 to late October 2026. Independent audit of 2,233 sampled votes: 0.45% errors (10). New: mode=trends gives statewide pass rates, split votes and outlier places by topic, each example linked to its official minutes. Every response repeats the exact ranges in coverage.

• Cities: Des Moines, Davenport, Sioux City, Waterloo, Dubuque, Urbandale, Ankeny, Marshalltown, Muscatine, Coralville, Newton, Indianola, Oskaloosa, Altoona, Clive, Waukee, Grimes, Norwalk, Bondurant, Carlisle, Pleasant Hill, Polk City, Windsor Heights, Perry, Winterset and Mitchellville.
• Counties (Board of Supervisors): Polk, Story, Dallas, Black Hawk and Dubuque.

West Des Moines, Johnston, Ames, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Council Bluffs and school boards are not covered yet. Records for the newest places are read straight from the official minutes on the city or county portal, and a vote is only included when its item and outcome can be quoted from those minutes.

Input

field
claim	A statement to fact-check
address	A street address or street name
topic	Keywords
city	Optional. Detected from the claim if you leave it out
dateFrom / dateTo	Optional, YYYY-MM-DD
maxResults (5) / maxChars (300)	Keep the output small
queries	Optional batch of up to 100 lookups

Output (per lookup)

{ "verdict": "contradicted", "confidence": "high",
  "reason": "The closest recorded decision(s) disagree with the claim on: no_voter.",
  "checks": [{"check":"tally","claim":"4-1","record":"4-1","result":"match"},{"check":"no_voter","claim":"Scott","record":["Rayford"],"result":"mismatch"}],
  "matches": [{ "government":"Sioux City City Council","city":"Sioux City","meetingDate":"2026-02-02",
    "itemTitle":"Resolution authorizing an Assignment Amendment with Flock Group, Inc. ...","outcome":"passed","voteTally":"4-1",
    "noVotes":["Rayford"],"abstainOrRecused":[],"amountUsd":548860,"minutesUrl":"https://...","citizenWireUrl":"https://citizenwire.org/sioux-city/2026-02-02/","matchScore":1 }],
  "coverage": "Covers recorded council/board votes ... Anything outside these governments or dates returns no_record." }

How verdicts work (no guessing)

• supported: a closely matching recorded decision agrees with every detail in the claim that can be checked: outcome, tally, unanimity, named no voters and amount.
• contradicted: the closest strong match or matches disagree on at least one detail the record states.
• no_record: no close match, the match is ambiguous, or the place is out of coverage. This doesn't prove the claim is false.
• A small LLM, when enabled, only picks topic words from the claim text. Every fact comes from the records.

Fast mode (Standby)

GET https://catalyst-labs--local-government-decision-lookup.apify.actor/?claim=...&token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN (also takes address, topic, city). GET /coverage lists what's covered.

MCP

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=catalyst-labs/local-government-decision-lookup

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.005 per lookup that returns an answer. A no_record verdict inside covered places counts as an answer. Out-of-coverage places and invalid input are never charged.