The head of the Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority, known as DART, says she’s optimistic members will come to agreement on how to fund the struggling system.

DART faces a nearly $5 million deficit by 2027.

Last week, the mayors of six member communities sent a letter to Des Moines Mayor Connie Boesen, threatening to leave DART if Des Moines does not pay more of the cost. Des Moines accounts for 70% of ridership and, according to a 2021 agreement, should pay about half of the property taxes to fund the system.

CEO Amanda Wanke says operating revenues declined as ridership patterns changed during and after the COVID pandemic. Wanke says all parties involved know what’s at stake.

“We need a regional system. We have to figure out how to fund it, but we need regional transit. It is essential to our economic development, to our workforce and to being the healthy and thriving community we want. There’s a lot of conversations yet to be had.”

Other DART members want Des Moines to raise its franchise fee — a tax on gas and electric bills — to help fund DART. Boesen says she does not want to impose that burden on property owners.

DART is conducting a comprehensive evaluation of services and will vote on a system redesign sometime next year.

A former north-central Iowa police chief received no jail time after a multi-year investigation into criminal wrongdoing. A judge in Emmet County District Court handed down a deferred sentence and two years of probation to Craig Merrill, 47.

The former Armstrong police chief reached a plea deal on two aggravated misdemeanor counts of assault with a dangerous weapon for using a taser on partygoers. He entered an Alford Plea, which means he maintains innocence, but takes responsibility for the charges.

Merrill and four other Armstrong city officials were arrested in 2021 on several counts of theft and fraud. Former Armstrong Mayor Greg Buum, Merrill’s father-in-law, is scheduled to be tried in Clay County on Oct. 1.

The Sioux City City Council voted down a plan to rezone a piece of farmland to build a concrete mixing plant and storage area.

Construction company Knife River wanted to buy 30 acres in the Leeds neighborhood for the project. More than 600 residents signed a petition in opposition. Many were concerned about air quality, traffic, noise and the location being too close to schools, homes and parks.

A representative for Knife River says the company is willing to work with the city to find the right location for the facility.

The Des Moines City Council voted Monday night to ban people from sleeping and camping on public property. The bans are targeted at people who are homeless.

The council also voted to lower the notice time from ten days to three before the city can remove tents and shelters on public property. Under the new bans, people who do not agree to move to a shelter can be arrested, charged with a simple misdemeanor and fined $15.

Councilman Chris Coleman, chair of the Homeless Coordinating Council, said the original idea for the bans came from a group of council members.

“The five people that voted for it tonight all ran for election in the fall. We all got elected. And I think it was loud and clear that people wanted us to find better long-term solutions, both to help the homeless, but also to make sure that we are accountable for keeping our parks and sidewalks safe so that the public can enjoy them.”

People can appeal to the city clerk if they receive a notice their encampment will be cleared. The mayor said the council does not have a timeline yet for when the bans will go into effect.

Read more.

It’s National Voter Registration Day Tuesday, and the state’s top election official is urging Iowans to register to vote and make a plan to vote.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate says the day is about reminding people that their vote is important. He says Iowa is one of the best states for voter turnout and registration.

“We’re really appealing to that base to make sure they’ve got their plan put together. Have they updated that voter registration, because some people have moved. Do they know where their polling site is? Do they know how they want to vote this year?”

Iowa residents who are U.S. citizens and will be at least 18 years old on Election Day can register to vote in the November election. Most Iowans can register to vote online and can check their registration online.

The deadline for voter pre-registration is Oct. 21. Iowans can also register to vote at their polling place on Election Day — they just might have to bring some additional documents to prove residency.

Read more.

Iowa nursing home inspections are falling short of federal requirements, according to an analysis by the State Auditor’s office.

Statewide, the average time between inspections is about 17 months. The federal mandate is 13 months.

State Auditor Rob Sand says if the state doesn’t have enough people to inspect the state’s 403 nursing homes on time, the Legislature should respond.

“If we’re way below the average for nursing home inspections, why would we not fund additional inspections. The entire purpose of the inspection is to make people understand that someone may be coming to take a look. That helps them do a better job of taking care of our elderly and vulnerable residents.”

Sand says Iowa ranks 46th in the nation for the number of nursing home staff members per resident. There is also high turnover in the industry. More than half of nurses who worked in a nursing home left in the past year.

An Associated Press investigation has found a group called the Patriots Run Project tried to recruit conservative candidates to run as independents in two competitive congressional districts in Iowa.

It was part of an apparent attempt to draw voters away from Republican candidates in Iowa and four other states. Patriots Run attracted potential candidates on Facebook and hired petition gatherers with ties to a Democratic consulting firm to try to put them on the ballot.

A man recruited to run against Rep. Zach Nunn in Iowa’s 3^rd Congressional District said he withdrew his name from the ballot when he learned Patriots Run was not backed by former President Donald Trump.

Nunn says he's outraged to see anyone prey on hardworking Iowans or try to deceive voters.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a top Democratic super PAC told the AP they had no part in the plan.

Iowans whose homes were damaged by storms or flooding this spring and summer might be feeling some pressure to get repairs done before the weather turns. FEMA is offering some free advice on rebuilding and making homes more resistant to damage from future disasters.

Greenfield was hit by a deadly tornado in May, and Rock Valley was heavily damaged in a June flood. FEMA spokesperson Barb Sturner says the agency has been in these areas since then.

““Iowa, as beautiful as it is, it is prone to disasters, and people who live there know that. Our goal is not only to help them recover from disasters, but it’s to help them minimize or prevent damage from future disasters.”

Sturner has an example of one tip that will save money in the future.

“When you’re putting that sheetrock back in, leave a quarter to a half-inch gap between the sheetrock and the floor. You can cover it up with a baseboard and nobody will even know it. But the advantage of it is it really helps prevent growing mold.”

FEMA specialists will be at the Greenfield True Value Hardware and M&H True Value Hardware in Rock Valley from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. Those who can’t make it in person can call the FEMA Hazard Mitigation Helpline at 833-336-2487.

While the FDA grapples with how to approve medicated assisted psychotherapy, Dr. Michael Flaum, professor emeritus at University of Iowa Health Care, is conducting research at the University of Iowa on how psychedelic drugs could be used to treat alcoholism.

Because of the challenges of using a placebo against a psychedelic drug, the study instead uses two different drugs to see comparative effects. Research subjects with moderate to severe alcohol issues are given a dose of psilocybin or ketamine. This allows them to compare the effects of the psychedelic drug to another drug with known effects to compare the differences. Neither the patients nor the researchers know who gets which drug.

Flaum said the researchers are finishing a small pilot project to explore if the study is feasible and what it’s like for the patients.

"What we've learned is we very much can do this. I just came from an exit interview of a patient who just completed the study. He had nothing but good things to say about it.”

Read more about psychedelic-assisted therapy.

When someone wants to add chicks to their backyard farm or populate a larger operation, they often order from hatcheries. For the past 100 years, those hatcheries have used the U.S. Postal Service to ship live baby birds around the country. Increasingly, customers and suppliers say slow deliveries are causing birds to arrive dead.

In 2020, more than 4,800 chicks died in a single postal service shipment to a Maine customer.

Postal service delays have become more persistent in the years following the pandemic, and a new ten-year plan was put in place by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy aimed at ending losses in the billions of dollars a year — and slowing delivery is integral to the plan.

The Midwest Newsroom interviewed four hatchery owners and four backyard farmers in different parts of the U.S., who all say they’ve seen a marked increase in deaths while baby birds are in transit with the postal service over the past year.

Read the full story from the Midwest Newsroom’s Kavahn Mansouri.

The chief of the Governor's School Safety Bureau says they have been doing a lot of training for school staff, law enforcement and first responders on how to handle incidents at schools.

Matt Anderson says they have also installed 1,253 emergency radios across different school districts. He added that they are in a second round of getting radios installed and have more than 100 schools who have asked for them.

Anderson says the school safety bureau had 300 total tips last year on Safe+Sound Iowa, the free app that allows anyone to report a concern. One problem, he says, has been false tips designed to get a response. Anderson says 32% of schools are using the state app, while several other districts are using another app to do the same thing.

The Des Moines City Council will vote Monday night on new city ordinances that could affect the homeless population. They will decide whether to ban camping in public areas and lowering the notice time before removing tents and shelters on city property from ten days to three days.

The city’s plan is for outreach workers from Primary Health Care to visit people found camping on public property. The workers would then help transport people to nearby homeless shelters. Someone who fails to comply would be fined $15 and would be charged with a simple misdemeanor. However, if shelters are full or the person is unable to pay, they would not be held liable.

Shelby Ridley, director of programs at Primary Health Care, presented a plan to the city council last week to hire three more outreach workers.

“Street outreach is a necessary thing for this community, but you won’t see less people experiencing homelessness until we have an increase in housing.”

Those against the changes say the new laws would unfairly criminalize homelessness and push people towards shelters that they already find cramped and unsafe. Those in support say the amendments will push homeless populations to use nearby available resources.

Des Moines City Manager Scott Sanders says the intent of the ordinance is not enforcement.

“There is language that we have added to be as clear as possible that the intent of this ordinance is to get compliance. To get to the heart of what we’re trying to do here is to get individuals into safer environments.”

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities have the power to make their own laws against camping in public. The Des Moines City Council introduced the proposed changes against camping less than a month later. Monday’s meeting will be the third and final reading.

Some Iowa farmers are already firing up their combines to start harvesting crops.

Angie Rieck Hinz, a field agronomist for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, says it’s a bit early, but “There are a few farmers who are taking out some corn and even some beans in a few places here in central Iowa.”

While Iowa came completely out of a four-year drought this spring with steady rains, it’s been much drier lately, and about two-thirds of the state is now considered “abnormally dry” on the drought monitor map. Rieck Hinz says that can be an advantage at this time of year.

“The heat, coupled with those dry conditions, is going to push that maturity on those crops a little bit faster,” she says. “We still need to wait for crops to dry down in some cases, but it’s been relatively dry for the last month compared to how we started off the growing season.”

There’s a very dry patch in north-central Iowa, from roughly the Webster City area to Iowa Falls, where Rieck Hinz says they’re more than three inches below average on rainfall for the past 40 days or so.

“Dry weather is always great conditions for harvest,” she says. “We can get big machinery in and out of those fields. We don’t have to worry about soil compaction. We’re not fighting mud. Let’s hope it stays that way. So the weather can both hurt us and help us at the same time when we get to harvest.”

(Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City contributed to this story.)

The city of Sioux City has officially approved selling land to a nonprofit that plans to build an inpatient substance use treatment center, which officials say is greatly needed.

Agape Community Services plans to pay more than $700,000 for the property. The deal includes a $210,000 forgivable loan from the city.

Founder and Executive Director Rachelle Rawson says the facility will first focus on men and provide a faith-based, holistic approach to help those addicted to drugs and alcohol.

“You know, I don't care if you have not currently struggled with addiction or related issues yourself, but you know somebody that has, whether it's a neighbor, a community member, a cousin, child. And it is going to take the whole community wrapping their arms around this to make it happen.”

Rawson says fundraising for the $12 million needed for the project could take two years, with two more years for construction. The center will be built next to the Woodbury County Jail and will use a similar program used in the federal prison system.

The plan is to start helping out dozens of men per year and then add services for women and children.

“We want to make maximum impact for generations to come,” Rawson said.

Isabella Luu

/

Iowa Public Radio

This weekend, Polk County Democrats hosted their annual steak fry to throw support behind presidential candidate Kamala Harris and 3rd District congressional candidate Lanon Baccam.

State Auditor Rob Sand and Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party Rita Hart were a few of the guest speakers at the event that drew a couple hundred voters to Des Moines Water Works Park.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker was this year’s keynote speaker at the steak fry. He encouraged voters to choose candidates that support public education, labor rights and abortion access.

“Do you believe that we need to stand up for your freedom to choose if and when you want to start a family? Then I need you to knock on doors and make phone calls and tell your neighbors and your friends to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.”

Speakers pushed voters to direct their enthusiasm into making a plan for voting and encouraging their family and friends to do the same.

The Sierra Club of Iowa is asking the Polk County District Court to overturn the state's approval of Summit Carbon Solutions' pipeline project. This comes after other similar lawsuits were filed this week from a group of state lawmakers, landowners and property rights advocates.

In June, the Iowa Utilities Commission approved Summit’s initial, nearly 700-mile route for an underground carbon capture pipeline.

At the end of August, the IUC granted Summit a construction permit and the right to use eminent domain on properties where landowners do not sign voluntary easements.

Construction in Iowa would not begin until North Dakota and South Dakota issue permits.

Summit is seeking additional IUC approval for a 340-mile expansion route to the original project. As part of the process, the company is holding public information meetings in the 23 impacted counties through Sept. 20.

Recent research from Iowa State University showed that only 5-10% of well owners test their water annually.

Catherine DeLong, the water quality program manager for Iowa State Extension, says one of the barriers to testing is a misunderstanding of what quality well water should be.

“I think a lot of the time, private well owners think that if you have a private well, it’s a normal thing to have bacteria, but it really isn’t. It means there’s something potentially structurally unstable with the well, that there’s a way for things from the surface to get into the well, so it is something to take seriously.”

She says testing regularly is important because so many of the contaminants’ adverse effects can’t be detected in the short term.

“With things like arsenic, with things like nitrate, we know that those health effects can really take years to have an effect. They’re odorless and tasteless, so if people have them in their water, they wouldn’t necessarily know unless they get it tested.”

Nitrates and arsenic in drinking water have been linked to cancers, cardiovascular issues and birth defects.

About 230,000 people in Iowa rely on private wells for their drinking water.

New data out this week shows that food inflation slowed in August, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But prices are still way higher than they were a few years ago, and that sticker shock is making its way into the presidential campaigns.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris frequently bring up high grocery prices when pitching why they should be the next president.

Donna Hoffman, a political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa, says pocketbook issues are extremely important and motivating for voters.

“If their pocketbook is particularly being hit by high gas prices or high food prices, then those are certainly things that can work their way into the things that the presidential campaigns want to address.”

Above all else, Hoffman says presidential candidates want to convince voters they care about the concerns of an average American. But once they’re in office, she says presidents are limited in their ability to lower food prices.

Read more from Harvest Public Media.

U.S. beef production is responsible for about 4% of the nation’s planet-warming pollution, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Some researchers say that eating less beef could lower emissions. But for some people, that’s easier said than done.

Beef’s cultural role in the United States can make that hard to pitch, Joshua Specht said. His book “Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America” argues beef is tied into the American frontier, affluence, masculinity and more.

“Beef consumption is at the core of what it means to be American. As they were creating America, ranching was a central part of that. Any time we talk about meat consumption today, that’s all kind of in the hamburger as we take a bite.”

Read more from Harvest Public Media.

Women across the U.S. will now get a report with their mammogram results that tells them about their breast density assessment. That’s due to a new federal law that took effect this week that aims to help level up the care women receive.

Breast density has nothing to do with the shape or feel of the breast, it’s actually a measure of how much glandular tissue the breast has. Dense breasts may make it the harder to detect abnormal growths on a regular mammogram, which could mean the woman may benefit from further screenings.

Tara Ballinger, a breast oncologist at Indian University Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, says there’s another reason breast density matters.

“Breast density actually increases risk of getting breast cancer. So, the more glands you have, the more cells you have. So, statistically, the more likelihood that something goes wrong and cancer can form.”

Prior to this federal rule, some states did not have any requirement to explain breast density to patients. But now all states will have to do it.

Ballinger says the next frontier would be to ensure that health insurance covers additional screenings women may need. The insurance coverage landscape is a patchwork. In the Midwest, states like Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky have expanded coverage for some breast imaging, while Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota and Iowa have not.

Read more from Side Effects Public Media.

There is big excitement over tiny turtles in central Iowa. A new program pairs the Iowa DNR, Iowa State University and Des Moines’ Blank Park Zoo to raise a species called Blanding’s turtles. The species is native to Iowa and classified as globally endangered.

Chris Eckles, the zoo’s chief engagement officer, says trained ISU students have tagged several turtles with radio transmitters, and brought any pregnant turtles they find to the zoo.

“We’ll then do an x-ray on the turtles to see how many eggs there are, and then we will induce her and have her lay her eggs here at the zoo. As soon as she’s done with that, we give the female back to the Iowa State student to take back to where they found that turtle — that’s really important to go back to where they know is home.”

Four pregnant turtles were recently found, and their eggs were incubated, which produced a crop of 57 baby turtles. For now, they are all being cared for at the zoo.

The dozens of turtles will be set free next spring in the spots where their mothers were discovered. The turtles were about the size of a quarter when they hatched, and they will be about three to four inches in diameter when released.

“It was very exciting when they hatched. I think we were all just very giddy. It just feels good that we can have some success, knowing that hopefully we can add population back to Iowa, and hopefully get them back into a rebound situation and bring the populations back up.”

Eckles says releasing 57 turtles from four mothers is a big deal because adults in the wild typically will only be able to raise one or two hatchlings to adulthood. Some of them may live as long as 70 years.

A new report shows more than one in every three Iowa adults are now considered obese.

Nadine Gracia, president and CEO of Trust for America’s Health, says the national report has Iowa tied for seventh with Indiana for the most overweight states.

“Iowa, in the latest data, shows that the rate of obesity among adults is at about 37%. Not a significant difference from the previous year, but what’s more important is really that we look at trends. When we look at the state over the past five years, there has been a significant increase, demonstrating that there is a need to continue to really work on addressing adult and childhood obesity.”

The report shows Iowa’s young people are mirroring the adults in seeing elevated weights.

“Rates of childhood obesity at the national level is at about nearly 20%. For children in the state of Iowa between the ages of six to 17, that rate is about 15%. Again, also seeing over time increases.”

About ten years ago, the report found zero states with an adult obesity rating over 35%, while the new report puts Iowa — and almost half of all states — in that category.

Obesity is a complicated issue to diagnose, and Gracia calls it a national public health issue that goes far beyond individual behavior.

“We also know how your environment, whether you have access to affordable, healthy, nutritious foods, living in a neighborhood where you can engage safely in physical activity — those types of structural factors are really important as it relates to risk for obesity.”

Other factors may include medications, genetics, other health issues and stress. The report shows West Virginia has the highest obesity rate at 41%, while Colorado ranked the lowest with 25%.

The University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa each reported Thursday their total enrollment numbers are up. It is the second year of growth since enrollment hit a post-pandemic low point in 2022.

Student numbers at Iowa’s Regents universities peaked in 2016 and were already in decline when the COVID-19 pandemic made things worse.

Last year, numbers began to rebound, which is continuing this year.

At UNI, student numbers grew 3% to 9,283. Enrollment at ISU totals 30,432 this fall. And 30,779 students are enrolled at the University of Iowa, which also brought in the third-largest class of first year students in the history of the university.

Music will continue at a legendary dive bar in northwest Iowa that hosts everything from Iowa entertainers to national acts.

Byron’s bar on Main St. in Pomeroy closed at the end of July due to structural issues. Owner Byron Stuart originally planned to build a new venue, but in the meantime started hosting shows at the local community center.

This week, the city sold Stuart the community center for $100,000.

“The crowds have been better because it's been a bigger place, and it sounds really good there. So, I'm excited. I've got music lined up every Sunday to the end of the year.”

Stuart says support for his bar has been overwhelming and greatly appreciated. GoFundMe donations paid for the new location.

Read the full story.

Jim Slosiarek

/

The Cedar Rapids Gazette

An attorney for Willard Miller is asking the Iowa Supreme Court for a chance to redo his sentencing with a different judge. The Fairfield teen pleaded guilty last year to killing his Spanish teacher in 2021.

Miller received a life sentence with a mandatory minimum of 35 years before being eligible for parole. His attorney, Ella Newell, argued that sentencing a juvenile to a mandatory minimum without testimony from an expert on child psychology amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Newell also claimed that the district court judge that decided the sentence did not correctly start from a stance against mandatory minimum sentences for juveniles.

Timothy Hau, with the attorney general’s office, represented the state.

“Experts aren’t perfect, but they can be helpful. And parties can choose to bring them, but certainly they’re not constitutionally required.”

Miller was 16 years old at the time of the murder and 17 at the time of his sentencing.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that three Libertarians running for Congress cannot be on the ballot in this fall’s election.

Nicholas Gluba, Marco Battaglia and Charles Aldrich are now running as write-in candidates in the 1^st, 3^rd and 4^th Congressional Districts.

The Iowa Supreme Court upheld the State Objection Panel’s decision that found the candidates weren’t properly nominated. The Libertarian Party of Iowa failed to follow state law governing the timing of county conventions.

The court rejected the Libertarians’ argument that substantial compliance was enough — rather, the court said strict compliance was required when it comes to laws for nominating candidates by convention.

The lack of Libertarians on the ballot could have an impact on close congressional races in the first and third districts.

Read the full story.

Nearly 40 Iowa Republicans are backing a lawsuit claiming the Iowa Utilities Commission acted unconstitutionally in its approval of the Summit Carbon Solutions’ pipeline.

The proposed pipeline would connect nearly 60 ethanol plants and stretch across five states. One of those plants is in Charles City, which is represented by Republican Rep. Charley Thomson, the primary author of the lawsuit.

At a conference Wednesday, Thomson addressed those concerns, saying constitutional rights shouldn’t take a backseat to profits and tax breaks for businesses.

“If eminent domain is, as we say in this instance, a violation of the law, ethanol — good as it is — would need to be a secondary consideration. We follow the law, we follow the constitution and then we start looking at business considerations.”

Lawsuits have been filed in district courts across Iowa and at the federal level.

Read the full story.

A multi-year case involving a north central Iowa police chief accused of using a stun gun during parties and other crimes appears to be settled.

The former police chief of Armstrong, Craig Merrill, entered an Alford plea to two aggravated misdemeanor counts of assault with a dangerous weapon Wednesday in Emmet County. That means he agrees to a deal with prosecutors but does not admit guilt. Court documents indicate all other charges will be dropped.

Merrill was charged for the taser incidents that happened at two parties at his home in 2016. His attorneys say people were willingly tasered.

Merrill and other city leaders were arrested in 2021 in what prosecutors called a “long-running corruption scheme,” which included the misappropriation of city funds.

Three city employees entered guilty pleas and did not receive jail time. Former Mayor Greg Buum, Merrill’s father-in-law, is scheduled to be tried in Clay County Oct. 1.

Merrill faces up to four years in prison when he is sentenced Sept. 17.

Peggy Whitson

/

Axiom

Iowa-born astronaut Peggy Whitson is scheduled to command another two-week mission to the International Space Station next year.

At 64 years old, Whitson is considered America’s most experienced astronaut. She posted on Instagram about the upcoming mission on Tuesday. The Beaconsfield native flew on three NASA long-duration space flights and the Axiom Mission 2 in May of last year.

She has spent a total of 675 days in space — more than any other U.S. astronaut or woman astronaut in the world.

The next Axiom mission, AX-4, will use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon spacecraft, launching from Florida.

Whitson will command an international crew of four, with the other three astronauts hailing from India, Poland and Hungary.

Axiom says the mission will emphasize scientific research, technology demonstrations and the commercialization of space. They have not released a specific date for the launch, only saying it will be in the spring of 2025.

Iowa has made significant strides in renewable energy over the last two decades, with wind and solar rising to 64% of Iowa’s electricity generation last year.

That’s according to the Iowa Environmental Council’s more recent analysis of the state's energy generation and emissions. But the IEC says utilities need to transition faster away from coal to reach national and international targets to mitigate climate change.

Steve Guyer with IEC is the report’s main author.

“We clearly are already uniquely positioned, but if we aggressively take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act, there are a lot of incentives and a lot of mechanisms — and by the way, these will last all the way through 2032 — that can get us there.”

MidAmerican Energy is Iowa’s largest utility and jointly owns six coal plants in the state. The company says it aims to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, in part by retiring its coal plants and building out more green infrastructure.

Wind represents more than 60% of MidAmerican’s generation capacity.

Nick Rohlman

/

Cedar Rapids Gazette

The Iowa Supreme Court plans to decide before Thursday if three Libertarians running for Congress can appear on Iowans’ ballots.

Lawyers for 1^st District candidate Nicholas Gluba, 3^rd District candidate Marco Battaglia and 4^th District candidate Charles Aldrich asked the state’s highest court Tuesday to put them back on the ballot.

Jennifer De Kock represented Battaglia in court.

“The fundamental question before this court is ‘Does the failure to wait 181 minutes after caucus to begin convention justify kicking Libertarian candidates off the ballot and violating Iowa voters constitutional rights to political opportunity?’ We believe that petitioners and precedent say no.”

Lawyers for the state say it’s important to strictly follow the requirements for nominating candidates to ensure an orderly, transparent and fair election process. The Libertarians say they’ll run for Congress as write-in candidates if their names can’t be on the ballot.

The latest Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 shots are now available for anyone ages six months and older.

The new vaccines target the widely circulating KP.2 omicron variant.

University of Iowa Health Care Chief Pharmacy Officer Mike Brownlee says people can get the new COVID shot at the same time as their flu and RSV shots to prepare for respiratory virus season.

“Right in the zone of September through November-ish timeframe to be able to get those vaccinations to protect you through the winter.”

Brownlee recommends, in particular, those who are 65 and older or immunocompromised get the new shot because they are at highest risk for getting severely ill.

The Centers for Disease Control recommends waiting three months after a COVID infection to get the vaccine.

Kendall Crawford

/

Iowa Public Radio

Efforts are underway to try and keep a Sioux City homeless shelter open this winter. City leaders heard a passionate call for action during Monday’s city council meeting.

The Warming Shelter serves more than 175 people in the winter, and due to lack of funding, can’t stay open. Jennifer Huls, who uses the facility, says people’s lives will be put at risk if the shelter closes on Oct. 1.

“So please, please, do anything you can to help these people. Because we will die out here, and you will find more than 200 people dead on these streets this winter, and that is not good.”

Council member Matthew O’Kane urged the public to donate to a GoFundMe account set up by the shelter. They need to raise $200,000.

“It is something that we need to prioritize as a community. We need to make sure that we're taking care of everybody in the community and pulling together.”

Even with the city offering some services for the unhoused, there is concern that there isn’t enough help available without the Warming Shelter.

Read more.

A northwest Iowa police chief says there is no threat to the public, but a suspect has been identified in connection to the lockdowns in Sioux County schools late last week.

Schools in the Sioux Center, Rock Valley and Boyden-Hull school districts were placed on lockdown Thursday after a threat was found written on a bathroom wall at the Sioux Center High School.

In a phone interview, Sioux Center Police Chief Josh Koedam said during the investigation, a juvenile was identified and detained. Koedam declined to give further details except to say the juvenile court system has been notified.

A federal grand jury has approved charges against 18 people in a massive nationwide scheme involving stolen checks.

The charges involved using the stolen checks received from co-conspirators that haven’t been charged. They would create sham entities and then open accounts at banks and credit unions in Iowa and other states under the names of those entities to deposit the stolen checks.

The leaders of the scheme worked in Arizona, and included people from Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. The court information says the co-conspirators attempted to deposit at least $10 million worth of stolen checks into fraudulent accounts and were able to obtain at least $2.2 million. They face charges of bank fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

Eight Iowa banks or credit unions were victims of the scam.

A genetically modified baker's yeast may be the answer to a problem that's long plagued ethanol producers: bacteria.

Shao Lu, a research microbiologist at the USDA’s Center for Research in Peoria, Ill., says the yeast is proving highly effective in lab trials.

“And it’s also [a] more cost-effective way, more sustainable, to use our technology than just to add antibiotics to their production.”

Bacteria can cut down an ethanol plant's production by upwards of 40% and force costly shutdowns.

Lu says it’s valuable to have an alternative to antibiotics as more bacteria develop resistance.

Ruth Harkin had many adventures and her own professional successes before she was known as the wife of former Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. She shares these stories in her new memoir, When My Husband Ran for President and other Short Stories.

Though it was Tom Harkin who would serve at the national level, Ruth Harkin was the first elected to public office. In 1973 she began serving as the Story County Attorney. She was the only woman in that role across all 99 Iowa counties.

“I thought, I just can't remain the only woman that's a prosecutor here. I have to help other women think of becoming prosecutors,” she said.

Harkin hired women as interns to get them into the profession and she allowed mothers to work part-time.

She started collecting stories from her life to share with her daughters and grandchildren, and then decided to share the book with the public.

Harkin is reading at the Iowa City Public Library at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 11. She will be at the West Des Moines Public Library on Thursday Sept. 26 at 6:30 p.m.

Read more from Natalie Dunlap.

Residents in a Sioux City neighborhood oppose the rezoning of a parcel of farmland for industrial use to build a concrete mixing plant.

The construction company, Knife River, wants to buy 30 acres in Leeds, which is currently a cornfield, to relocate its operation. However, a few dozen residents who attended Monday’s city council meeting are in opposition, including Barry Bohlke.

“This will affect all of us in Leeds. The new amount of traffic, the dust, the noise, the child safety and the damage to our property values.”

Bohlke says over 500 residents have signed a petition against rezoning.

A representative from Knife River says the company will comply with citizen concerns and the project would be good for the Sioux City economy.

The city council decided to push back the final vote by one week since one council member was not in attendance. Sioux City Mayor Bob Scott opposes rezoning because he says the development is too close to homes.

Three Libertarian congressional candidates are asking the Iowa Supreme Court to let them appear on Iowans’ ballots this fall.

They have appealed a Polk County District Court ruling issued Saturday that said the candidates cannot appear on ballots in the November election. The Iowa Supreme Court scheduled a hearing for Tuesday morning.

Polk County District Judge Michael Huppert upheld the State Objection Panel’s decision to remove 1st District candidate Nicholas Gluba, 3rd District candidate Marco Battaglia and 4th District candidate Charles Aldrich from the ballot.

He wrote the panel had the legal authority to hear challenges to the Libertarians being on the ballot, and the panel properly used “a strict compliance standard” to find that the Libertarian Party of Iowa failed to follow state law for nominating its congressional candidates.

“Finally, the process utilized by the objectors through the efforts of the panel did not unconstitutionally infringe upon the associational rights of either the Libertarian Party or Iowa voters,” Huppert wrote.

Read more from Katarina Sostaric.

Tension over the war in Gaza was on display at a fundraising event for Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks over the weekend.

Four protesters in the crowd interrupted speakers to call for a ceasefire.

Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, the event’s emcee addressed the crowd just after one protester was escorted from the event by off-duty law enforcement officers.

“Isn’t it great that we live in a country where you can protest despite having very limited brain cells?” he said. “Try that stuff in Iran or in front of Hamas.”

Kaufmann’s father, Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann, told the crowd opposition to the protesters’ message is a key issue in this year’s election.

“What you just saw there is not a splinter group of the Democratic Party,” Kaufmann said. “…a part of the Democratic Party that is going to come alive if we don’t stop this thing.”

Miller-Meeks noted the four protesters made a donation to her campaign so they could get into the event. “We’re happy to take the Democrats’ money to beat them,” she said.

All four protesters called for a U.S. arms embargo against Israel. Miller-Meeks visited Israel in late August as part of a congressional delegation, but did not mention the trip or the Israel-Hamas war during Saturday’s event. In statements posted online while she was in Israel, Miller-Meeks called Hamas “barbaric” and said the U.S. “must stand with Israel in the face of terrorism that has no bounds.”

Miller-Meeks is seeking reelection in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. Christina Bohannan of Iowa City is the Democrat challenging Miller-Meeks in this year’s election, as she did in 2022.

A tick bite can often spread deadly diseases among cattle herds, costing ranchers millions of dollars in treatment, decreased production and cattle deaths.

Bovine anaplasmosis is one such disease that can cause anemia and even death. But researchers at the University of Missouri say they’ve created a new vaccine which could protect cattle from the illness.

That’s hopeful news for Teresa Steckler, a researcher with the University of Illinois Extension who specializes in the beef industry. She’s hoping the vaccine will prevent future outbreaks.

“This can be completely a game changer for the cattle industry, as far as productivity of our herds throughout the nation.”

Before cattle producers can get their hands on a vaccine, it will require a few more years of research, and eventually approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Read more from Harvest Public Media’s Héctor Alejandro Arzate.

A new pilot program aims to increase the overall health of the town of Manchester and Van Buren County in eastern Iowa.

The program is led by the Iowa Rural Vitality Coalition, which is made up of experts from Iowa’s three regents universities, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Iowa Rural Development Council.

Experts say they are in the process of collecting extensive data on the communities, so eventually they know how to make the most strategic investments in public health.

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Vice President Jason Henderson says the hope is to have very long-lasting effects.

“We're going to need to step back into the communities and look at them, you know, five years from now, ten years from now. ‘How did this one ripple of us dropping the stone in the brook, right? How has it rippled over time?’”

The program formally began in April. The coalition estimates that setting up a plan will take several years.

The Western U.S. has seen decades of disputes over water. Now, climate change could bring more water scarcity to the Midwest and Great Plains.

Missouri state Rep. Jamie Burger is watching the fights over water in the Western U.S. closely. He worries that eventually people will come seeking Missouri’s abundant water resources. Last legislative session, he introduced a bill to ban most exports of water from the state.

The bill passed the state House but failed in the Senate. Next session, Burger expects the bill will pass when he proposes it a second time.

“We feed the world with our water,” Burger says.

Water law experts say this type of legislative move is a classic warning shot that could signal a more contentious future over water in the region. Periodic courtroom dramas over water may become more common as climate change sets up conditions that could lead to more water scarcity in the north central U.S.

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media’s Kate Grumke.

Corn sweat is a summertime phenomenon that happens when the crop releases water into the air, which can increase humidity. But the muggy heat wave that hit the Midwest at the end of August probably was a little late to be related to corn sweat.

Missouri’s State Climatologist Zack Leasor says most of the corn is too mature to sweat much now.

“I'd argue this time of year, the bigger contributor is just a warm air mass with southerly winds that were bringing up some of that humidity from the Gulf of Mexico, as well.”

On top of that, Leasor says climate change is making things more humid, and that trend will likely continue.

Read more Harvest Public Media’s Kate Grumke.

Several Iowa beaches had problems with E. coli contamination for much of the summer this year.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources monitors beaches at state parks, as well as many locally managed parks. The Iowa Environmental Council says 2024 saw the second-highest number of E. coli advisories behind 2015.

Chris Jones, a retired University of Iowa research engineer, who now monitors water quality around Iowa, says conditions at recreational areas around the state are getting worse.

“These microorganisms get in there through manure runoff or other means. They can take advantage, and the cloudiness — or the turbidity — of our lakes prevents the sunlight from killing these organisms. And there’s a combination of things, I think, happening to make the problem worse.”

Jones thinks water quality at beaches should be monitored more than once a week.

Over 15 weeks of monitoring between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Beed’s Lake Beach in Franklin County was under an E. coli advisory 13 times. Backbone Beach in Delaware County made the report 11 times. Lake Ahquabi in Warren County was also on the list several times.

Another controlled explosion in northwest Iowa brought down the remaining section of a railroad bridge destroyed by flooding in late June.

Several charges were attached to the steel truss that once connected Sioux City and North Sioux City, S.D., across the Big Sioux River.

Another blast took place last month on the South Dakota side of the river.

BNSF Railway plans to clear away the debris and build a new, modern bridge to replace the 100-year-old one. The company says it is still working with the Army Corps of Engineers on the required permits.

State officials have chosen 11 charter schools to share in $4 million of grant funding aimed at helping new schools find locations and existing schools to expand their programs.

Gov. Kim Reynolds has championed the growth of the state’s charter system. In 2021, she signed a law that provides state funding to charter schools that are not tied to local school districts.

The money for charter school startup and expansion grants comes from American Rescue Plan funds.

Six of the grant recipients are new charter schools that will open in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. Each of them will receive up to $500,000 to acquire facilities and purchase equipment.

Several Sioux County school districts were placed in a lockdown Thursday following a threat.

According to authorities, a threat was found written on a bathroom wall in the Sioux Center High School referencing a school shooting and mentioning schools in the Rock Valley and Boyden-Hull school districts.

Authorities ordered Sioux Center schools and schools in the surrounding communities of Hull, Orange City and Rock Valley to lockdown and secure their buildings.

Sioux Center Community Schools Superintendent Gary McEldowney issued a statement saying school safety is priority. The statement also says law enforcement was engaged immediately, and a thorough investigation took place. No weapons were found.

McEldowney says he is confident the threat has been resolved, and that law enforcement will be present to provide assurance to students, staff and families that the schools are safe.

Lawyers for three Libertarian congressional candidates argued in court Thursday that they should be on the ballot as an option for Iowa voters this fall. That’s after Republicans on the state objections panel kicked them off the ballot last week for failing to comply with state law regarding county nominating conventions.

The Libertarian candidates’ lawyers say the party was in substantial compliance with the law. They say the candidates’ voting and free speech rights are being violated, and that should outweigh whatever interest the state has in making political parties follow convention rules.

Republican attorney Alan Ostergren says the state has an interest in regulating who can be on the general election ballot.

“No candidate has an unfettered right to access to the general election ballot. To get on the general election ballot, a candidate has to follow certain rules.”

Polk County District Judge Michael Huppert says he’ll issue a ruling soon, but the Iowa Supreme Court is expected to ultimately decide if the Libertarian candidates can be on the ballot.

Read the latest from IPR’s Katarina Sostaric.

A northwest Iowa homeless shelter is closing its doors on Oct. 1, leaving some concerned for the unhoused this winter.

Sioux City’s Warming Shelter opened in 2013, but officials say lack of funding and community support forced them to make a tough decision.

Travis Vanfossen, a direct caregiver at the facility, has worked there for two years and worries the closure will be a detriment to the community.

“It’s so sad. We love our residents, we would do anything for them. It’s not even about us. It’s just trying to find a way to keep them safe.

The Warming Shelter serves more than 175 people in the winter. During the summer, it is open a few days a week and offers a place to stay for a few families and disabled members of the community.

Vanfossen says the staff is trying to find other services for those impacted by the closure.

The head of Sioux City’s Neighborhood Services Divisions says the city plans to offer assistance during the transition. This includes security deposit assistance, locating apartments and program referrals.

Read the full story.

Iowa 2^nd District Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson is criticizing the Biden administration’s proposal to forgive student loans. The plan would eliminate federal student debt for around 27 million borrowers.

On Thursday, Hinson said the plan to forgive student loan debt could set a precarious precedent for higher education.

“This would not be a one-time occurrence. This will incentivize students to take on more debt, knowing that someone else will ultimately pay it back. That will drive up tuition rates and perpetuate the accumulation of the cycle of debt instead of breaking it.”

Hinson’s comments come as several Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration this week over the proposed cancellation of at least $73 billion in federal student debt.

Madeleine C King

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Iowa Public Radio

The chair of the Iowa GOP says the party will spend “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on a voter turnout effort this year.

Jeff Kaufmann says getting Republicans to vote before Election Day is the priority.

“I understand tradition. I get grandmas and grandpas wanting to take their grandkids into the voting booth. I get that, and respect it, but here’s the deal: every single dime has got to be maximized.”

Kaufmann says once an Iowa Republican votes early, the party will no longer call or send them reminders in the mail — or pay people to knock on their door to ask about their voting plan. While former President Donald Trump has said his goal is to have all votes cast on Election Day, Trump has called early voting and absentee voting an “acceptable option” in 2024.

Democrats have embraced early voting for years. In 2022, Democrats held a significant edge in early voting a week ahead of Election Day.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds says heading into this year’s election, she has a simple message to her fellow Republicans.

“We need to bank the vote, bank the vote, bank the vote. We need to learn to play their game,” Reynolds says. “We have very safe elections in the state of Iowa.”

Reynolds and Kaufmann made their comments Tuesday at a fundraiser for House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford. Grassley’s grandfather, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, closed his remarks at the event by announcing that he intends to vote early.

Iowans can submit absentee ballot request forms to their county auditor now. County auditors may start sending ballots to voters on Oct. 16. The early voting period in Iowa used to be 40 days before Election Day, but Republican lawmakers have taken steps to reduce the early voting window to 20 days. Absentee ballots must be in the county auditor’s office by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 5.

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors unexpectedly fired the county executive director after only 18 months in the position. Guillermo Morales was fired at an open board meeting Wednesday.

Board Chair Rod Sullivan read a statement in which he accused Morales of being abrasive and adversarial with board members and county staff.

Morales said he was not told the reason for the meeting ahead of time and was never given a chance to correct the complaints against him.

Supervisor V. Fixmer-Oraiz said the meeting was “wildly inappropriate” and that the Johnson County board should have gone through a formal work evaluation.

The board voted 3-2 to fire Morales.

Before the vote, Morales was asked if he would rather resign, but he said no because he wants to be able to claim he was wrongfully terminated.

Rachel Cramer

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Iowa Public Radio

The Iowa Arboretum and Gardens in Boone County celebrated the opening of its $2 million Treehouse Village Wednesday.

Dozens of adults and kids gathered at the edge of an old oak forest at the Iowa Arboretum. After a ribbon cutting with donors, the arboretum’s Executive Director Mark Schneider opened the gate.

“We wanted to get families outdoors; we wanted to get families to the arboretum; we wanted something that was accessible, and we also wanted something that was architecturally interesting, and it kind of grew out of the woods where it’s located.”

The main play area includes several wooden treehouses connected by ramps, rope nets and climbing walls, along with adaptive equipment, like wheelchair swings and a ground-level zipline.

Paved trails lead to overlook gazebos and a large wooden suspension bridge across a ravine.

Schneider said Treehouse Village is the first installment in a broader effort by the arboretum to engage more young families and help connect them to nature.

Read the full story.

Photo courtesy of Chad Stephens

As an old Union Pacific steam engine chugs through Iowa this week, a pitstop Wednesday in western Iowa brought along a surprise guest.

Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno stepped off Big Boy No. 4014 in Denison.

Chad Stephens says it was surreal to see a celebrity in town.

“He was checking everything out and taking pictures, and I wasn’t going to pass up that opportunity. I got my picture taken with someone with a net worth of $450 million, so that’s pretty cool.”

A spokesperson for Union Pacific says the company was proud to host Leno in the cab of the locomotive Wednesday morning for his show Jay Leno’s Garage.

The train continued on to Boone, without Leno, and will take off for Cedar Rapids Thursday before heading for Illinois on Friday.

Big Boy’s Heartland of America tour started in Wyoming on Aug. 28 and will wrap up in late October after rolling through nine other states.

Woodbury County Supervisors and county employees exchanged heated words at a meeting Tuesday night over the attorney shortage and a statement released by Chairman Matthew Ung.

Ung’s statement denounced union members who voted down a proposal that increases starting wages and perks. Union members say new hires could make more than veteran employees.

Ung says turning down the deal “was worse than looking a gift horse in the mouth. This is shooting the gift horse and then expecting another horse.”

Ung says understaffing is a major public safety concern. The office is down eight out of 18 attorneys.

“You can burn my effigy while you do it, but sign it. Stop whining and be a part of the solution.”

Woodbury County Assistant Attorney Matt Verzani responded to Ung’s statement.

“Couldn't believe you're going to tell these people that are going above and beyond, that they are creating a danger to Woodbury County. I found that statement repugnant, and I wanted to tell you that personally.”

Employees of the county attorney’s office say they are putting in long hours and even working against their doctors’ orders when sick or injured.

Other board members say Ung’s comments do not represent their viewpoints on the issue.

An official from the U.S. Department of Energy visited an experimental farm at Iowa State University that is studying how to grow food around solar panels. It’s the first project of its kind in Iowa centered around "agri voltaics" – the idea of using the land around these sites for other agricultural purposes, such as growing produce or grazing livestock.

Katie Hendrickson from the U.S Department of Energy says projects such as these will help the nation shift toward cleaner energy.

“The ability to put solar all across the country is going to help decarbonize and we have to go to farmland for that. So being able to colocate on agriculture land – whether that’s grazing, especially crops like we’re seeing today … We can’t get there without working with our farmers.”

ISU researchers started growing broccoli, strawberries, summer squash and other crops on the site this year. They’re also raising bees and a pollinator garden to support production. The project is funded through a four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

A University of Iowa employee diverted nearly $1 million of university funds into his own bank account, according to a report by the State Auditor’s Office.

The audit concluded that UI employee Brian Busch pocketed payments for outside projects completed at the Department of Physics and Astronomy Machine Shop.

Busch was placed on paid administrative leave in 2021 and terminated last month.

State Auditor Rob Sand says the audit found Busch used university employees and resources to complete external machinery projects. He then pocketed the payments, which should have gone to a university account.

“For example, there was one instance where Mr. Busch stated in a text message, ‘anything over 30 hours and I will lose money,’ not the university, not the machine shop, but him, personally.”

Sand says the university failed to increase scrutiny of Busch following a 2019 incident where the UI found he mishandled a project tied to his personal company.

“They did not do an internal review of conflict of interest policies or heightened review of Busch's future transactions at the Machine Shop.”

In a statement, the UI says it is reviewing its conflict of interest and administrative leave policies.

Sand says the audit has been turned over to state and federal officials who will determine whether to file charges.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is predicting an extension of the 2018 Farm Bill will pass in the coming weeks. He said it is likely to pass as part of the temporary spending bill that Congress needs to approve to keep the government operating.

“I think we’d be better off having a five-year Farm Bill,” Grassley said. “But that isn’t going to happen.”

Congress voted last November to extend the policies of the 2018 Farm Bill, which expired on Sept. 30, 2023. So far this year, the House Committee on Agriculture has voted for a new version of the Farm Bill, but the measure hasn’t been brought up for a vote in the full House, and negotiations in the Senate haven’t produced a bill yet either.

Grassley, a Republican who serves on the Senate ag committee, said the new Farm Bill needs to include higher price supports for commodities like corn and soybeans.

“We say it this way in the United States Senate: We need more farm in the Farm Bill,” Grassley said. “Presently, it’s 85% food stamps and 15% agriculture.”

Congress has a Sept. 30 deadline to pass budget bills, but the last time that happened was 1997. Lawmakers instead pass a measure that funds all government agencies. Grassley said that move should happen well before the end of the month.

“When you get close to shutting down the government, like, let’s say the week before, there’s a lot of taxpayers’ money spent just getting ready to shut down the government,” Grassley said. “So, we ought to bring some consistency to it and it should not be a controversial thing.”

Gov. Kim Reynolds says she will take some time to pick a new lieutenant governor after Adam Gregg resigned Tuesday to lead the Iowa Bankers Association.

“I became aware of it last Friday. He sat down and visited and said that this opportunity had been presented for him. I support his decision to focus on family. This is a very demanding job, and it really requires a lot of sacrifices. I understand him wanting to spend more time with his family.”

Reynolds says she won’t announce a new lieutenant governor before she leaves for a trade mission to India next week. She says Senate President Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, is next in the line of succession until she appoints a new lieutenant governor.

Reynolds declined to say if she will run for reelection in 2026. She says for now, she is focused on getting former President Donald Trump elected and getting Republicans elected to Congress.

The Domestic Violence Intervention Program is opening a $7.2 million facility that will double the capacity of the shelter’s current 35 beds.

Alta Medea, director of community engagement at DVIP, says eliminating economic pressure to stay in a dangerous situation is a paramount concern for victims and advocates alike.

“So, 99% of victims report economic or financial abuse in addition to either the emotional or physical abuse that they experience. And so, this project allows them to regain some of that independence, rebuild their abilities, to just have a safe future on their own.”

In addition to the new facility, DVIP is working to secure funding from the Iowa Finance Authority to purchase six townhomes.

Come October, the program will also fully take over sexual assault support services for a ten-county area.

Katarina Sostaric

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Iowa Public Radio

A Polk County District Court judge has ordered the state to delay the certification of ballots while three Libertarian congressional candidates try to get back on the ballot.

Republican officials on Iowa’s state objection panel voted last week to remove the three candidates from the ballot. They agreed with Republican objectors who said the Libertarians didn’t follow state law regarding the timing of their county conventions.

Candidates Nicholas Gluba in the 1st District, Marco Battaglia in the 3rd District and Charles Aldrich in the 4th District appealed that decision to the district court.

Judge Michael Huppert issued a court order Tuesday granting their request to pause the state’s process of approving ballots for printing until he can give the case a full hearing. A hearing has been scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

Read the full story.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate is waiting to finalize the ballots for this November's election as three Libertarian candidates appeal the decision that had them removed.

Tuesday is the deadline for certifying which names will appear on Iowans’ ballots this November.

Pate said in a statement that his office will certify all other candidates, but he will wait for a court ruling before proceeding with certification for 1^st District candidate Nicholas Gluba, 3^rd District candidate Marco Battaglia and 4^th District candidate Charles Aldrich

Pate and Attorney General Brenna Bird voted last week to remove the three Libertarians from the ballot. They agreed with Republican objectors who said the Libertarians didn’t follow state law regarding the timing of their county conventions. The Libertarian candidates filed appeals on Friday in Polk County District Court, where a judge could decide if they can get back on the ballot.

Madeleine King

Iowa Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg resigned from his position effective Tuesday.

A news release from Gov. Kim Reynolds’ office said Gregg is “stepping down from his position to pursue a career opportunity that allows him to focus more on his family.” The Iowa Bankers Association announced Gregg will be its new president and CEO beginning Oct. 1.

The release states that the president of the Iowa Senate, Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, is next in the line of succession until Reynolds appoints a new lieutenant governor later this fall.

Gregg said in a statement it was “a great honor” to serve with Reynolds for seven years. He said it was a difficult decision, but he feels his “time in public service must come to a close.”

Reynolds said Gregg was a “tremendous partner” and that it’s the right decision for him to prioritize his personal life.

Read the full story.

This story was updated at 4:40 p.m. on Sept. 3 to include information released by the Iowa Bankers Association.

Madeleine C King

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Iowa Public Radio

The Des Moines Gamer Symphony Orchestra is the only orchestra in Iowa that exclusively plays songs from video games, like The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy. They celebrated their fifth anniversary this summer with a concert featuring over 100 volunteer musicians.

Performing video game scores is a growing trend among orchestras. In an industry that has increasingly played music from popular film scores, some other orchestras around Iowa see video games as the next step.

Brian Baxter, executive director of the Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra, says video game music is no different than what people hear in Hollywood music.

"It's really in depth. There's lots of composers, there's tons of gamers out there. So, we're excited to kind of get into a new scene there this year as we try a lot of different, new and innovative types of programming.”

The Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra is one of several in Iowa putting video game scores in their season for the very first time. The orchestra will perform “Video Games in Concert" in May.

Read the full story.

Two athletes from Iowa claimed gold over the weekend at the 2024 Summer Paralympic Games in Paris.

Olivia Chambers, a senior at the University of Northern Iowa, won the women’s 400-meter freestyle for visually impaired swimmers on Saturday. She also won a silver medal Tuesday in the women's 200-meter medley. Chambers is originally from Arkansas and is participating in five individual events at the Paris games. She is UNI’s first Paralympic medalist.

Matt Stutzman, also known as “the Armless Archer,” lives in Fairfield and won the men’s individual compound open. Stutzman broke the world record for the farthest accurate archery shot in 2015. This is his fourth and final Paralympic Games.

These two athletes and others with Iowa connections spoke on Talk of Iowa to share their journeys to compete on the global stage.

Read more.

The recent heatwave created food storage problems for small farms without access to proper refrigeration. But an operation in Des Moines has found a creative way to keep its produce fresh.

The Global Greens Program uses modified window air conditioning units and 4-inch insulation to keep the harvests of their 20 immigrant and refugee farmers from spoiling in the triple-digit heat.

The modifications involve altering the window unit’s temperature sensor, which drops the AC’s lowest temperature from about 60° to around 40°.

Zachary Couture, land and production supervisor for the program, says it’s a simple technique that helps his farmers save produce and money. He estimates construction of a mobile cooler costs less than $5,000, while a commercially built cooler can run up to $20,000.

The modified air conditioners have been installed in small trailers to give farmers access to refrigeration who may be harvesting on leased land.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority has awarded Habitat for Humanity more than $700,000 to build 48 new affordable housing units in Waukee.

Walnut Crossing is the organization’s first townhome development in the Des Moines metro, and one of 62 housing projects across Iowa to receive state incentives. Part of the incentives will come as tax benefits through a state program that supports housing projects on empty or dilapidated land.

As with other Habitat for Humanity projects, buyers must make 80% or less of the area median income to qualify for one of the townhomes.

Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity CEO Lance Henning says there is high demand for affordable units in the area.   

“We’re excited about the way this partnership is between the community and Habitat for Humanity. It doesn’t answer all the housing challenges … but it's a great step in the right direction.”

Most of the new units at Walnut Crossing will have three to four bedrooms. Construction on the first set of units is slated to start at the end of next year and be completed in early 2026.

State officials report that Mpox has been detected at the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility.

The Iowa Department of Corrections did not say how many people have been affected, but said in a statement that they are “actively managing the situation with robust health measures.”

Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is a viral disease that’s typically transmitted through close skin-to-skin contact. There is no cure for the illness, but a vaccine is available that can prevent infection in high risk individuals.

The Des Moines Fire Department launched a program aimed at reducing the volume of 911 calls and connecting residents to long-term services across the metro.

According to the department, 82 individuals made up nearly 1,500 of their transports in 2022. Now, a team of paramedics will visit these patients for follow-ups through the department’s new Mobile Integrated Healthcare program.

The team will identify nearby long-term resources available to patients and help them with tasks, such as setting up doctor appointments, finding transportation and refilling prescriptions.

Des Moines Fire Department Assistant Chief Percy Coleman says building trust with patients has been key to the program’s success.

“Our goal is to get those individuals to a point where they’re independent and that they can take care of their own needs.”

The Mobile Integrated Healthcare program also runs an acute care station at Central Iowa Shelter & Services that can provide medical evaluations for individuals in the area.

The Farm Bill is set to expire at the end of this month following a one-year extension.

At the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Pennsylvania Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, was optimistic about getting a new bill passed by the end of the year.

Speaking at the same event, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said he’s hopeful, but much work still needs to be done.

“We're going to have to get practical about this. We're going to have to make sure that we know exactly how much resources are available for new programs and expansion programs, and we're going to want to make sure that the programs and resources are fair.”

Critics say commodity price supports in the proposed House Farm Bill would benefit farmers in the south more than those in the Midwest.

Vilsack says once congressional members get practical, he’s confident they will hammer out a deal.

A new report on the economic landscape of health care in Iowa found the state is facing growing disparities for access between its rural and urban areas.

The report by the nonpartisan economic nonprofit Common Sense Institute Iowa looked at a wide number of health care factors.

It found the majority of Iowa’s hospitals that operated at a loss in 2022 were concentrated in the state’s rural areas.

Chelsea Lensing, a professor of economics at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, helped work on the report. She says there is also a big urban-rural divide when it comes to primary care providers.

“In the last ten years, we've seen a decrease of 1% in access to primary care providers in urban counties, but we've seen a decrease by 8% in our rural counties.”

Lensing says lawmakers have enacted some policies aimed at supporting rural health care in recent years, but it’s still too early to measure their impact.

Sheila Brummer

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Iowa Public Radio

Leaders of one of western Iowa’s largest unions say they are optimistic about the future of the labor movement in Iowa.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 222 President Leo Kanne admits unions have lost power over the years, but says there has been a resurgence, including a recent merger with a similar union in Nebraska.

“We've been doing some good things. We just need to probably work on lobbying and get some laws that favor us a little better.”

Kanne says there is more interest in unions due to the value of contracts, wage increases, benefits and concerns about child labor regulations.

Jaylee Hurst, secretary-treasurer with UFCW Local 222, says it’s time for workers to take their power back as government leaders have weakened unions over the years.

“Every law and regulation that was written is generally because somebody was hurt, and I really do not want to see those rollbacks happen. I think we have a lot more work to do. And so, watching the membership strengthen and get ready for this fight — I'm excited.”

Hurst says the union recently helped unionize packing plant sanitation workers and pushed to keep minors from working in packing plants.

Kanne and Hurst took part in a Labor Day picnic on Monday in Sioux City. The event has been held for 121 years at Riverside Park.

Read the full story.

The Iowa City Community School District is exploring dividing up some of its 20 elementary schools. The plan would put kindergarten through second grade in one school and third grade through fifth in another. The lower school would be paired with the upper school. It would consolidate the number of separate institutions without necessarily decreasing the number of buildings.

Iowa City Schools Superintendent Matt Degner says there is a cost advantage to having more sections of the same grade occupying the same school. It prevents the district from duplicating resources across all 20 separate locations. It is a cost savings that he hopes will contribute to smaller class sizes.

Iowa City, like many districts across the state, is managing a downward trend in the number of K-12 students entering the classroom.

Earlier this year, Iowa City Community Schools announced it was closing its smallest elementary school in Hills.

This year marks the 130^th anniversary of Labor Day in America. On June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September a national holiday.

Paul Iversen, a labor educator at the University of Iowa, says employees became more interested in organizing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Iversen says results have been mixed when workers have tried to organize.

“It's turned into gains in union membership, but not huge gains in union membership. And some of that is related to the laws that currently exist that make it difficult for employees to organize.”

He points to Iowa’s status as a “right-to-work” state, which includes laws that make it harder for unions to collect dues.

Iversen says the Labor Day holiday is just one result of labor movements in the late 19^th century. They also produced the eight-hour workday, health benefits and protections against child labor.

Iversen made his comments Friday on River to River.

Newton Medical Center announced it will no longer offer labor and delivery services starting Oct. 15.

According to a statement from MercyOne, which operates the hospital, the unit closure follows a decade of workforce challenges, including recruiting and retaining doctors. MercyOne says all Newton Clinic patients expected to deliver after mid-October should consult with their doctor for alternative delivery options.

According to state data, about two dozen Iowa hospitals have stopped delivering babies in the past decade.

A district court judge has denied a request to dismiss a state lawsuit against TikTok.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed the lawsuit, which says TikTok is lying to parents about the frequency and severity of inappropriate videos that it shows to kids. TikTok argued the state did not have standing to bring the case.

The judge ruled the case can move forward, but did rule against a request from Bird for an injunction against the company.

The ruling says the state has not yet produced any evidence to show an Iowan has viewed and been harmed by such videos.

Adam Gonshorowski

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Photo Courtesy of the Sioux City Art Center

One of northwest Iowa’s largest summer events takes place in Sioux City this weekend. To celebrate the 30^th anniversary of ArtSplash, the Sioux City Art Center commissioned a large-scale public art project.

New York City-area artist Amanda Browder came up with the concept of covering large sections of the Art Center with all different shades and types of fabric in a modern geometrical design.

“All of a sudden, it became this fiery space where the Art Center bloomed with color. You can see it from the highway. You can see it from another state. It's so big.”

The artwork, called “Razzle Dazzle,” consists of five large sections measuring a total of 25,000 square feet, and will be on display through October.

All the fabric — some even 100 years old — was donated locally. Hundreds of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds helped with cutting, pinning and sewing.

Part of the project's funding came from a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Gilchrist Foundation and the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

Read the full story and see more pictures of the exhibit.

Rachel Cramer

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Iowa Public Radio

Public information meetings about Summit Carbon Solutions’ expanded pipeline route in 23 Iowa counties began this week and will run through Sept. 20.

After each public meeting, the company can move forward with land surveys and voluntary easement agreements with individual landowners in the county.

Summit and its partners want to capture CO2 emissions from ethanol plants across five states and transport it to underground storage in North Dakota. Opponents at the meeting in Jewell in north-central Iowa Thursday raised concerns about safety, damage to farmland and eminent domain.

The Iowa Utilities Commission granted a permit for the company’s original 690-mile route on Wednesday. But Summit still needs permits in North and South Dakota before any construction can begin in Iowa.

Summit officials said they plan to file a permit application for the expanded route in October. If completed, the whole pipeline footprint would cross 38 counties in the state.

The oldest and largest continually-running Black rodeo in the nation, the Roy LeBlanc Okmulgee Invitational Rodeo, takes place every year in Okmulgee, Okla.

Held for two nights in early August, it includes a variety of rodeo events, from bull riding, calf roping and steer wrestling to the Pony Express, ladies steer undecorating and junior barrel racing. This year, hundreds of spectators and competitors from across the country celebrated the rodeo’s 69th anniversary.

“My dad, my grandfather and about 22 other guys, they started the Okmulgee County Roundup Club in 1956,” Kenneth LeBlanc said.

The white rodeo held at Okmulgee at that time didn’t allow Black cowboys to compete in the main rodeo or to sit anywhere but in the “Colored Section.” So, LeBlanc’s grandfather and the rest of the group decided to create a roundup club, which was an open rodeo. Eventually, it became an invitational Black rodeo, and when the founders became older, LeBlanc said his dad kept the rodeo going.

“Then when he passed, I started to coordinating and running and things like that,” LeBlanc said. “So yeah, hopefully my kids will keep it going.”

Read the full story from Harvest Public Media’s Anna Pope.

Representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency visited residents in Scott County Thursday in response to severe storms that hit the area in June and July.

FEMA disaster teams can respond to the immediate needs of residents and help them register for assistance. People can use the FEMA money to pay for a temporary place to stay, home repairs or other needs not covered by insurance.

Any homeowner or renter whose property was damaged by the storms is encouraged to apply. More information is available online or on the FEMA app.

The Black Hawk County landfill in northeast Iowa is now recycling its methane emissions into usable natural gas. The landfill has been made airtight to trap methane from the decomposing trash. It is then piped into a newly constructed plant, where it is cleaned of impurities and transported by trailer to Illinois for distribution.

Construction of the facility began in 2022 with the goal of reducing the county landfill’s carbon footprint. Two years later, with construction completed, Black Hawk County Solid Waste Commission Chair Brain Heath says that’s exactly what’s happening so far.

“We’ve got an annual reduction of 5,000 tons of methane, 13,000 tons of CO2 and will bring in an estimated $70,000 of revenue after the first year of operation.”

The Illinois plant currently provides gas service to Wisconsin’s Dane County, with direct pipelines to other places planned next year.

Courtesy of the Hampton Chronicle

Cedar Falls Police have arrested a man who was accused of posting anti-immigration flyers in Hampton for also allegedly putting the signs in the Cedar Falls Public Library earlier this month.

Daniel Alan Embree, 38, is charged with posting the flyers that read “Illegal immigrant hunting permit” and “Trump 2024” at Latino businesses in Hampton.

Cedar Falls Police allege that Embree designed the flyers himself and placed them in Spanish language materials in the Cedar Falls library. Both incidents occurred on Aug. 13.

Embree is charged with third-degree harassment and is currently being held in Black Hawk County jail.

The start of the school year was delayed for students in Rock Valley, where both the public and private schools were damaged by severe flooding. But after two months of repairs and preparation, classes are set to begin next week.

When the Rock River rushed out of its banks in late June, it damaged 40% of homes in Rock Valley. It also flooded classrooms and ruined books at Rock Valley Community Schools and Rock Valley Christian.

State and local officials spent the next eight weeks scrambling to get the schools ready to reopen on Sept. 5.

At an appearance with Gov. Kim Reynolds celebrating the start of the school year Thursday, the principal of Rock Valley Christian said buses are coming from as far away as New York to replace ones that were ruined.

In the public schools, many rooms are still unusable, so Superintendent Matt Van Voort says some classes will meet at a local church or in a 7,000 square foot modular building built for the district. But students will be back in person in Rock Valley, and he says that shows the power of community.

State Auditor Rob Sand, the only Iowa Democrat who holds a statewide office, said the state-funded Education Savings Accounts for private school students is a big worry for Iowans.

During a town hall meeting in Delaware County this week, Sand told residents that he is carefully following the program's progress, which Gov. Kim Reynolds calls one of her greatest achievements.

Sand said the "vouchers program really is a very consistent concern for people," and he added that people should be concerned. He said hundreds of millions of dollars are being sent to private schools with no audit obligation and no rules.

Over 30,000 private school students in Iowa have qualified for ESAs this year. When fully implemented, Iowa will be among eight states where all private school students are eligible for state funding to cover tuition and other expenses.

As he travels the state on his 100 Town Hall Tour, Sand said this is a topic he hears about frequently, as it relates to his role in serving Iowans as the “taxpayers’ watchdog.”

Sand said if any Iowans notice something suspicious or have concerns about financial irregularities in their local governments and entities, they can submit a confidential tip to his office online.

Rachel Cramer

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Iowa Public Radio

The USDA announced seven new projects, including one in Iowa, aimed at increasing domestic fertilizer production and lowering prices for farmers.

Fertilizer prices more than doubled between 2021 and 2022, in part due to supply disruptions from the war in Ukraine.

In response, the USDA created the Fertilizer Production Expansion Program. It gives grants to companies to help them modernize equipment, develop new technologies and build production plants.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack spoke at the Farm Progress Show in Boone Wednesday.

“Today, we are pleased to announce a continuation of our effort to expand more fertilizer production in this country, so we are more self-reliant and more dependent on our own capacities, as opposed to capacities from some other country.”

One of the grant recipients, Quality Flow Environmental in Maquoketa, is getting a $4.7 million grant to convert dairy waste into fertilizer. To date, the USDA has awarded nearly $300 million to 64 projects across the U.S.

Read more.

Iowa Democrats say the state’s Area Education Agencies are starting the school year with 429 fewer employees than last year. That’s after Republicans in the Iowa Legislature made changes to the system’s funding and structure.

Iowa’s nine AEAs reported a loss of staff ranging from 9-18%.

House Democratic Whip Lindsay James of Dubuque says that’s “distressing.”

“Four hundred twenty-nine fewer staff means that there are 429 fewer providers and professionals providing early childhood special education, crisis intervention and mental health, literacy, math, professional development. So, there are 429 fewer folks taking care of our kids.”

Democratic lawmakers say they don’t know how many of those people have taken other education jobs in Iowa.

AEAs are leaving a lot of media and education services jobs open this year because of a funding shift from AEAs to school districts. Special education funding hasn’t been changed yet, but some AEA leaders say it’s hard to hire for special education positions because educators are looking for job stability.

The Iowa Waste Reduction program recently helped some of the families who were hit by flooding in Clay County.

Iowa Waste Exchange Coordinator Shelly Codner says they were able to send unneeded mattresses and beds from Iowa State University to Spencer as part of a Kiwanis project called Sweet Dreams for Spencer.

The goal is to get a bed and a mattress to every child whose family lost their home during the flooding.

Codner says Sukup Manufacturing donated the trucks to move the beds to Spencer. She added that this was one of the more rewarding projects they worked on, knowing the need for those who have suffered from the flooding.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is predicting a roughly 25% dip in on-farm income for 2024.

During the Farm Progress Show in Boone on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said when compared to the previous three-year periods, the stretch from 2021 to 2023 generated some of the best farm income in the last five decades.

But, he said, roughly 85% of that income went to fewer than 8% of farms in the U.S.

“We cannot only make sure that production agriculture continues to prosper and takes advantage of all this amazing innovation that you're surrounded by at the Farm Progress Show, but that we also figure out ways in which we can support our small and mid-sized farm.”

Vilsack said the USDA has been working on this, and he gave the example of nearly a billion dollars in funding for over 180 livestock processing facilities across the country.

Vilsack also talked about investments to expand ethanol blends and local food purchasing agreements with schools and food banks.

Read more.

The Iowa Utilities Commission has officially granted a permit for Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed CO2 pipeline. However, there are more steps to come before there is any construction.

The IUC said in a ruling Wednesday that Summit had filed most of the documents the agency demanded when it partially granted a permit back in June.

Opposing landowners raised objections to the IUC’s latest decision. They said Summit still has not made all the required changes to its pipeline route.

The IUC mostly rejected those claims but said Summit must clear other hurdles before beginning construction. For instance, Summit cannot build in Iowa until it has approval in North and South Dakota.

This week, Summit began hosting public meetings to discuss plans to expand the original project. The Iowa Chapter of Sierra Club said they will appeal the IUC’s decision in court next month.

A health insurance company is investing millions of dollars into mental telehealth services in K-12 public school districts in Iowa.

Just this week, the Cedar Rapids Community School District received $1.5 million from Minnesota-based health insurer UnitedHealth Group as part of a one-year pilot program.

The district’s superintendent, Tawana Grover, says the money will help fund an online telehealth portal that students can use to access mental health counseling.

“It's one thing to check in. It's another thing to spend 30 minutes or an hour with someone that is solely focused on your needs, what you need, what you're dealing with and helping to not only listen to, [but] to provide you with strategies that you can use whenever you go beyond the session.”

The provider is Hazel Health, which focuses on school-based care.

UnitedHealth says its funding is aimed at providing these resources to historically underserved and rural communities. In the end, they hope to impact 100,000 students.

As of Wednesday, UnitedHealth has funded the creation of two such programs in Des Moines and Council Bluffs. No rural programs have been announced.

At the Farm Progress Show near Boone on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack talked about steps toward developing a bird flu vaccine for dairy cows.

Vilsack said the USDA has authorized an H5N1 vaccine for dairy cows to move toward the field trial stage, which began this week at the Center for Veterinary Biologics in Ames. Since March, the virus has been confirmed in nearly 200 herds across 13 states, including Iowa.

While dairy cows typically recover, H5N1 is highly contagious and lethal to chickens and turkeys. According to the CDC, four people have contracted the virus from sick dairy cows and nine people this year have gotten sick from handling infected chickens.

Vilsack said more publicly funded research is needed to prepare for and respond to livestock diseases.

“We invest a lot of money in healthcare research in this country — tons of it — millions, billions of it. And we beg, borrow and steal for ag research money.”

Read more.

A University of Iowa study finds that many Americans affected by storm damage are hesitant to take advantage of low-interest government loans.

Cameron Ellis, a professor at UI’s Tippie College of Business, says he was surprised to find over a quarter of property owners surveyed turned down the loans because they thought the interest rate was too high. Ellis says the rates are almost always lower than the market rate and cheaper than alternative funding sources.

“The interest rates on these things are often cheaper than treasury rates. So like, the government can’t borrow at this rate.”

He says the terms of these loans are not as restrictive as most people think.

“It's not like student loans. If you go bankrupt, the loan gets wiped out in bankruptcy. It’s not stuck with you forever.”

The Small Business Administration has been urging Iowans with damage from this year’s floods and storms to apply for low-interest loans. Ellis says Congress has discussed eliminating the federal subsidy for the programs, but that would push rates up and reduce participation, increasing the pressure on homeowners.

The Iowa State Patrol reports two people were killed in two separate crashes early Wednesday morning.

State troopers say a speeding car refused to pull over on Interstate 235 in Des Moines just before 1 a.m. The chase led off the interstate and into downtown, where troopers say the car turned the wrong way on a one-way street and hit another car head-on.

The patrol says a juvenile in the fleeing car was killed and four other people were injured.

In the second crash, also around 1 a.m., troopers say an SUV went out of control on Main St. in Keokuk, hit a utility pole and killed the driver.

No names have been released in either case.

Republican officials on Iowa’s state objection panel voted Wednesday to take three Libertarian candidates for Congress off the ballot. They agreed with GOP objectors that the timing of this year’s Libertarian county conventions did not follow state law.

First Congressional District candidate Nicholas Gluba, 3^rd District candidate Marco Battaglia and 4^th District candidate Charles Aldrich will not be on the ballot unless they successfully appeal the decision in court by Sept. 3.

Secretary of State Paul Pate and Attorney General Brenna Bird, both Republicans, voted to remove them from the ballot. Pate says political candidates need to do their homework on ballot access rules.

“It’s not an ideal situation but the rules are the rules, and I, as the commissioner of elections, don’t get to make them up. I get to enforce them as they are. And I think this is not an easy process.”

State Auditor Rob Sand, a Democrat, voted to keep the Libertarians on the ballot. He says issues with internal political party business aren’t a basis for removing candidates from the ballot.

Libertarian Party of Iowa Chair Jules Cutler says she is disappointed in the decision but not surprised.

“It is about silencing us. Yes, it is about making sure that they are better positioned to win. If you want to win, how about you campaign, not silence other people.”

The three candidates say they’ll run write-in campaigns if their names cannot be on the ballot.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the last name of Libertarian Party of Iowa Chair Jules Cutler.

State Auditor Rob Sand says his office will conduct an audit of the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown.

He says the audit comes at the request of Sue Cahill, D-Marshalltown. Cahill told Sand that the audit is needed after the unexpected layoffs of 11 full-time staff in July. She says these cuts were made without input from the Legislature and occurred despite the home receiving an additional $1 million in state funding during the budget process.

Cahill says in her letter to Sand that the cuts are in direct conflict of their mission to “provide a continuum of care to Iowa’s veterans and their spouses in an environment focusing on individualized services to enhance their quality of life.”

Karl Lettow of the Iowa Veterans Home released a statement in response saying the home will “fully cooperate” with the audit.

He also claims the layoffs are being misrepresented.

“The assertions that 11 employees were laid off and the realignment would negatively affect our quality of care are objectively, verifiably false. The fact that new positions were simultaneously created has been consistently, selectively omitted by multiple sources. In the end, the vast majority of the affected staff filled the new positions created by the realignment and three were promoted. Three others will pursue other opportunities.”

Photo contributed by Nancy Roth.

The Riverboat Foundation held an emergency meeting this summer to decide if they would grant the Kalona Historical Society funds to transport a barn from 20 miles away onto the property. They awarded them $300,000.

There is nothing particularly special about the barn, and Historian Michael Zahs says that's the point.

“I think a lot of times when we preserve things for the future, we do not preserve what is normal,” he said. “We preserve the mansions and the eight-sided barns and the round barns. And so are we going to be raising a whole generation of people that think that was normal?"

The barn is one of several projects the village has taken on to deepen the understanding of Iowa’s history.

The Wahl Museum, which sits on the property, was recently rebuilt and updated with new exhibits, including a streetscape of early 20th century Kalona.

“When people walk in here ... they're pretty surprised and shocked as to what this looks like,” said Nancy Roth, managing director of the village. “This isn't a small-town looking museum. This is a big-city looking museum, and that's something that excites us.”

In addition to managing the ongoing projects, Roth is preparing for the upcoming Kalona Fall Festival, held on the historic village grounds Sept. 27-28. The event features food, entertainment and old-world demonstrations.

Read more from Natalie Dunlap.

A former University of Iowa student has voluntarily returned to the United States from Jordan to stand trial for attacking a person in Iowa City in 2022.

Ali Younes is accused of choking a woman until she was unconscious and taking her earrings. In May of 2023 he used Jordanian travel documents to leave the country before his trial was set to begin.

His parents were convicted of helping him escape. They were released on parole earlier this year.

University of Iowa police helped facilitate an agreement with Younes to surrender to authorities and return to the U.S.

He arrived in Chicago Tuesday and will be brought to Iowa to face charges of attempted murder, robbery and escape by a felon.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig says the final round of Local Food for Schools grants are out for this year. Schools use the grants to buy meat, eggs, produce, dairy and other local foods from area farmers.

“What this is all about is providing some small grants — $2,000 — to those school districts, and that will be an incentive for them to buy locally.”

The program is entering its third year, and Naig says in this round, 137 public and private schools were awarded grants. He says through the first two rounds, more than $1.7 million was awarded to 162 Iowa schools, and more than 110 farms and food businesses sold products to schools through the program.

“While we’re able to supply […] what schools are looking for in terms of today, right now, I think this is an area that’s growing. So, I believe we’re going to see increased interest in schools and institutions looking to buy local. And I think we’re going to be seeing either an expansion of — and the addition of — some farms that are going to try to supply that marketplace.”

A list of schools approved for grants is available here.

Iowa's Area Education Agencies

As the school year begins, Iowa’s Area Education Agencies and school districts are implementing a new law that shifts some AEA funding to school districts and moves oversight of special education from AEAs to the state.

Over the summer, AEA leaders had to figure out what to charge school districts for media and educational services under the new "fee for service” model, find out which services each district wants from their AEA and figure out how to provide them after hundreds of employees left since AEA changes were proposed by Gov. Kim Reynolds.

"Going from the system we are in to what the new reality of the system looks like has been just a lot of learning, research [and] connecting with colleagues to get that stood up on a short timeline,” said Cindy Yelick, chief administrator of Heartland Area Education Agency.

This year, the law signed by Reynolds in March shifts 60% of AEA funding for media and educational services to school districts. They can decide to buy specific services from an AEA, get similar services elsewhere or use the money for something different.

Next school year, districts will have control over all of the media and education services money that previously flowed directly to AEAs — about $68 million. The law will also shift 10% of special education funding to school districts, leaving 90% with the AEAs.

Read the full story.

It has been just a couple of months since Iowa was declared free of drought, but Tim Hall doesn’t want people to forget the lessons learned from the historic dry spell.

Hall, a hydrology resources coordinator at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, worries about apathy setting in after a relatively quick recovery from drought conditions. When he talks to water utility operators around the state, he has a common piece of advice.

“Think back to the last couple of years, and what did you wish you had done beforehand, before you got into the drought? Make a note of that and then go do it, because we’re gonna return to drought conditions at some point.”

Hall says while the rains in June got a lot of attention, Iowa actually began recovering from the four-year drought in October of last year. In six of the eight following months, Iowa saw above average precipitation.

The Iowa Utilities Commission held a hearing Tuesday to review potential changes to the state’s renewable energy rules.

Environmental groups claim the rules, written in 2017, are outdated and have been used by utilities to mislead Iowans about their renewable energy usage. They want them rescinded and new rules put in place.

Josh Mandelbaum, an attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, shared an example from MidAmerican Energy, which claimed to provide 100% renewable energy to customers in 2022.

“The lead statement of that press release is a false statement and obscured the fact that MidAmerican continues to operate several coal plants in the state.”

MidAmerican Energy’s Arick Sears said the allegation is false.

“It's not how we do business. We don't look to mislead our customers, or to pull a bait-and-switch. So that is something with which I would significantly disagree. But I do believe that there are, through this rulemaking, some opportunities to evolve the Chapter 30 rules to accommodate what current customers are looking for.”

The commission asked all concerned parties who attended the hearing to submit comments about proposed changes to the rules next month.

Shelia Brummer

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Iowa Public Radio

A Sioux City woman who is the wife of a Woodbury County supervisor has been released from a federal prison in Minnesota after serving time for voter fraud.

Kim Taylor, 50, will now spend four months on home confinement in Sioux City. She was convicted last November by a federal grand jury on 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration and 23 counts of fraudulent voting.

Taylor was released from the minimum-security prison in Waseca, Minn., Friday. Her sentence is under appeal.

The charges all stem from signing up voters during her husband, Jeremy Taylor’s, run for supervisor and Congress. He was never charged but decided not to run for another term on the board of supervisors.

Police in a central Iowa city are telling residents not to approach a water buffalo that is roaming around.

Pleasant Hill police say they were called about an animal in the road Saturday, and it turned out to be a water buffalo. The owner of the animal told police it is aggressive, which proved to be true when Animal Control tried to contain it.

A police officer eventually fired one round from a shotgun at the water buffalo after police say it became aggressive toward them. The animal then fled and remains on the loose.

Pleasant Hill police are working with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office to use a drone to try to locate the animal.

Iowans who want to vote by mail can now start requesting absentee ballots for this fall’s election.

Tuesday is the first day county auditors can accept applications for absentee ballots.

Iowa State Association of County Auditors President Becky Bissell says it’s good for Iowans to request ballots sooner rather than later to allow for processing at the auditor’s office and for mail times.

“It’s really important to get them in ahead of time so that you have more days at home to fill out your ballot, and then that also gives you more days that you can get it mailed back to us.”

Bissell says Iowans who want to vote by mail should make sure they are registered to vote. Voters can then print an absentee ballot request form online or call their county auditor to have an application mailed to them.

Completed ballot request forms must be mailed or delivered to the voter’s county auditor. County auditors can start sending ballots to voters on Oct. 16.

Read IPR's voter guide.

A former Republican congressional candidate is endorsing a Democrat in the November election.

Kevin Virgil lost the June primary against incumbent Rep. Randy Feenstra by 20 points in the 4th District.

Over the weekend, Virgil posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that voters should consider splitting their tickets to support former president Trump for the White House and Democrat Ryan Melton for Congress.

“I'd rather have somebody who's intellectually honest about what they stand for, rather than somebody like Feenstra who doesn't really meet with the public and then just votes the way his corporate donors tell him to.”

Virgil and Melton both oppose carbon capture pipelines and want to try to lower cancer rates, but disagree on other issues like abortion and government spending.

Feenstra released a statement that says Virgil is an “East Coast liberal” who chooses to endorse a Democrat who will block Trump’s agenda. Virgil moved to rural Sutherland in O’Brien County late last year.

Melton says it’s unprecedented that Virgil would back him over incumbent Feenstra. He’s surprised, but he understands based on what he says voters tell him on the campaign trail.

“There's a lot of anger right now among Republicans against their party leadership, and that anger is justified because their party leadership continues to sell them out to their donors.”

Virgil says even though they disagree on many issues, Melton has integrity and the same viewpoint on fighting carbon capture pipelines, lowering high cancer rates and improving rural Iowa.

“I think it's time for people to start deprioritizing party loyalty and think about electing the leaders that actually want to solve the problems.”

Virgil says blind party loyalty has not helped Iowa in terms of education, poverty, mental health and support for family farms. But when it comes to the top of the ticket, he wants Trump back in office.

Polk County has extended its Extreme Temperature Plan until Thursday morning to give people a place to escape the heat.

The plan lowers the barrier to entry at homeless shelters and designates official cooling centers across the city – including at public libraries and community centers. It also allows free rides to these locations via the DART bus system.

Brett McIntyre, the emergency management program assistant for Polk County, says increasing access to these shelters can reduce heat-related illnesses and take pressure off emergency rooms and other city services.
                
“So the more avenues we can give people to get to places to cool down – we can try to eliminate that extra burden on our healthcare system.”People looking to use the cooling centers are advised to call ahead to check if they are currently open.

A full list is available at polkcounty.gov.

The last holiday of summer is just ahead, and tens of thousands of Iowans will hit the road for the Labor Day weekend.

AAA spokesman Brian Ortner says the record-breaking summer travel season will wrap up with what's anticipated to be another exceptionally busy holiday for vacations.

“The Labor Day weekend is up 9% compared to last year, and the good news is that the cost of travel domestically is down 2%. So, it's great for consumers, and great to see people back out on the roads and taking that last summer trip."

Since most Iowa kids are already back in school, regional road trips tend to be the most popular Labor Day option for families. Because of that, Ortner says other vacationers see this as an opportunity to travel the world, with the expectation of smaller crowds at popular destinations.

"Domestic airfares are 2% less compared to last year. Hotels are up a little bit compared to last year, about 7%, but that balances out if you're renting a car, which is 16% cheaper this Labor Day holiday compared to last year."

The majority of vacationers over Labor Day will be traveling by motor vehicle, and while electric cars are becoming more common, most cars, trucks and SUVs still run on gasoline. Ortner does not expect any major jumps in gas prices in Iowa before the weekend.

"Gas prices, thankfully, have remained steady, hovering around that $3.20 per gallon average across the state. And even with the popularity of summer road trips, gas demand is down. Daily driving habits have changed post-pandemic, tempering price spikes."

Gas prices vary widely across Iowa. The most expensive fuel is reported in Dubuque at $3.35 per gallon, while Sioux City has the cheapest gas at $2.98.

The State Hygienic Laboratory confirmed the first case of West Nile virus this year in a man in Harrison County.

Iowa State University entomologist Ryan Smith oversees the state’s mosquito surveillance program. He says this year’s heavy rainfall and flooding have led to a “big explosion” in the number of mosquitoes, especially in western Iowa.

“Mosquitoes take advantage of standing water. Any kind of flowing or moving water doesn’t allow for the juvenile stages of mosquitoes to survive. And so they really do thrive on that flooded or standing water in many of these locations.”

The state health department recommends dumping out standing water to help cut the number of mosquitoes, which Smith agrees with.

“These mosquitoes usually don’t travel very far, and so if you can reduce places where they might breed, then more than likely you’re also going to reduce the impact of where you might find adult mosquitoes.”

The health department also recommends wearing mosquito repellent when outdoors to prevent mosquito bites, especially when they are most active at dawn and dusk.

Those infected with West Nile may not experience any signs or symptoms of the virus, according to the health department. Some people experience minor symptoms, like fever and mild headache, while others can develop serious symptoms such as a high fever, headache, disorientation and muscle weakness. There were 17 confirmed cases of West Nile virus in 2023 and one death.

Gov. Kim Reynolds says it’s critical to ensure Iowa has enough electricity and upgraded water treatment plants to support business expansion.

“Especially for rural Iowa, we need to figure that out,” Reynolds told Radio Iowa during a recent interview. “We’ve got a lot of capacity in rural Iowa, but if you don’t have the load capacity or you don’t have the water treatment capacity, it’s hard for those existing businesses to expand or think about locating there.”

Water treatment plants are expensive. For larger communities, it can cost $12 million for a plant that can handle an average of ten million gallons per day.

Reynolds said the cost for smaller communities, while less, cannot be easily borne by residents who’d pay higher utility bills to pay for it.

“The populations aren’t where they need to be to sustain it.”

The State Revolving Fund provides communities with low interest loans to finance drinking water systems, water treatment facilities and sewers, but Reynolds said she’s asked the director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority to review the range of state incentives that are available — and what could be proposed for the future.

The EPA recently announced a dozen drinking water systems in Iowa need upgrades to remove so-called “forever chemicals” that are linked to sites where firefighters have used foam to quickly put out fires.

Several Midwestern states are encouraging older farmers to give farmland access to the next generation.

A new program in Missouri aims to make it easier for beginning farmers to get access to land by offering tax deductions to incentivize older farm owners to sell or rent their land to those trying to get started.

Kristine Tidgren, a professor at Iowa State University and the director for its Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation, says the new program is part of a growing effort to help the industry. That’s as both the average age for farmers and the number of beginners continues to grow.

“We need them to come in and fill in, because our current farmers aren't going to be able to continue to farm forever.”

Joe Lau—who farms outside of Kansas City—knows how hard it is to get started as a new farmer. He says he’s excited to see how Missouri’s new program will incentivize landowners to work with beginners.

“You know, I would just encourage those people with those resources, the landowners, to consider a young beginning farmer when they, when they go to rent, even if it wasn't just for the tax benefits, just the fact to get a little bit of new blood into farming.”

Other states, including Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, have their own incentive programs to encourage land transition to younger farmers.

Read more from Héctor Alejandro Arzate.

Thousands of kids in Iowa head back to school this month and not all of them are required to be immunized against certain communicable diseases. Last school year, about 3% of Iowa school kids were granted religious or medical exemptions. Some parents who comply with the immunization requirement still feel herd immunity or natural immunity would be better for their kids than a shot.

To achieve herd immunity and natural immunity, you need to get infected with the virus. This means you may be rolling the dice and hoping that your child’s body will survive the disease without short or long term severe consequences.

Dr. Paul Offit, a leading expert on viruses and vaccines, explains the reason vaccines are helpful and effective comes down to the way they work in the body.

“If you're naturally infected with measles, measles will reproduce itself in your body thousands and thousands of times and can cause serious and occasionally fatal infection. If you're inoculated with a measles vaccine, the virus can reproduce itself ten, 15, 20 times and then stop.”

Read more from Farah Yousry.

Waterloo school board members will vote Monday night to either withdraw a plan to merge the city’s high schools or put it on November’s ballot for voter approval.

The plan would convert Central Middle School to a high school for all 10^th through 12^th graders to attend. Middle schoolers would be moved elsewhere. It’s funded with an existing statewide sales tax that didn’t require voter approval when the school board passed the plan in July.

Voters brought a petition to the board two weeks ago asking the plan to be put on the ballot.

Waterloo Community School District Superintendent Jared Smith says the merger would help graduation rates improve because more students would have easier access to the career center. He says another goal is to close achievement gaps.

“We are a minority majority district. So, we got 60 plus percent of our students who are of color, and we do feel like this high school project would meet the needs of all students and we would see academic success in closing that achievement gap with all of our students.”

Opponents to the plan are concerned with the cost of the project and transportation. One board member has said the district hasn’t done enough to address the cultures of the high schools merging.

Despite record flooding in northwest Iowa and a record number of tornadoes across the state, the relatively mild summer should produce good crop yields.

“In typical La Nina falls, we generally see warmer temperatures, which could be good for agriculture, drying down in the fields," State Climatologist Justin Glisan said. "We don’t need as much propane to dry down the grain. But also, some semblance of a near-normal to slightly wetter pattern for September, October and November. So, it could be shaping up to be another excellent season in fall, as well as summer.”

Though temperatures will be heating up over the weekend, it won't reach the heat levels experienced at this time last year, he said.

“If you remember last year after the state fair, we had two flavors of heat waves. We had one in which dew points were up in the upper 70s and low 80s. So we had heat index values in the 120°-130° range. And then we had a second heat wave that was very dry, low relative humidity, but overall, we haven’t seen heat waves.”

Glisan made his comments on IPR’s River to River on Friday.

A cabinet-level federal administrator is in western Iowa to encourage people who’ve seen their homes and livelihoods damaged or demolished by this year’s severe weather to accept help from the federal government.

Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman heads the U.S. Small Business Administration and tells Radio Iowa that the SBA isn’t just devoted to helping small businesses recover, but also helping home owners and renters. She says her team aims to help customers and employees.

Guzman is in the Adair County town of Greenfield, which was hit by an EF-4 tornado in May that killed four people and destroyed 153 homes. It’s been an especially bad year for severe weather in Iowa, with significant damage in multiple counties from storms, flooding, straight-line winds, and a record 122 tornadoes.

Guzman says the SBA has approved over 500 loans of $62 million to residents and businesses across the three disaster declarations.

Guzman plans to visit Greenfield businesses as well as the SBA’s Greenfield Disaster Recovery Center which opened earlier this month. She also plans to host a meet and greet with homeowners to hear about their recovery needs.

Friday afternoon, the administrator will hold a roundtable meeting in West Des Moines with federal, state and local stakeholders, along with business owners and non-profits, to discuss tornado damage recovery efforts. She says the agency’s loans are very affordable.

“These are 30-year terms, so those payments are spread out over quite a long period, and they’re very low cost, as low as 2.68% for homeowners and renters, as well as as low as 4% for businesses and 3.25% for nonprofits,” Guzman says. “We hope to continue to move forward and get as many of those who need help the assistance that they need.”

Before flying back to Washington D.C, Guzman plans to meet with the owners of BLK & Bold in Des Moines, the first black-owned nationally-distributed coffee company, as part of celebrating National Black Business Month.

Over 40 languages are spoken in the city of Waterloo, often by families of first-generation immigrants to Iowa.

That has brought on a shortage of translators, and in turn a difficulty for non-native English speakers to connect with essential services.

Glen Keith is the executive director of Love Inc. in the Cedar Valley, one of several area nonprofits that provide community support for non-native English speakers. He says it’s sometimes difficult to connect people with what they need due to a shortage of translators.

“We have such a diverse community here in the Cedar Valley, and oftentimes it bridges misunderstandings and cultural gaps, and being a volunteer-based organization, it’s always tough to find enough translators to talk with folks who need that assistance.”

Love Inc. currently has two translators, one for French and another for Spanish.

Waterloo languages range from Burmese to Bosnian, from Spanish to Congolese French.

School district schedules and academic documents are shared in four languages to accommodate families who speak a language other than English at home.

“When you think about legal documents, people applying for different things, there’s an incredible need,” says Keith. “And then you think about all the nonprofits serving this community, we’re all in the same boat asking for help.”

Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson is speaking out against Vice President Kamala Harris’s southern border policy as outlined in her acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination.

Hinson’s comments came after Harris said that the nation can "reform its broken immigration system” while also criticizing former President Donald Trump for his role in striking down a bipartisan border security bill.

Hinson argued in her media call on Friday morning that support died because the bill simply wouldn’t do enough.

“That bill is a nonstarter in the House because it’s like a piece of masking tape over a gushing Niagara Falls. It’s not a realistic plan. It still allows for nearly two million illegal immigrants to come in every year.”

She also went on to criticize Harris for having not yet met with the head of the Border Patrol Union with just over 70 days before the election.

This fall, 319 public sector labor unions across the state will vote on whether to recertify their unions. Before contract negotiations can begin, public sector unions have an extra step the private sector doesn’t. More than 50% of the union have to vote “yes.” Any “no” votes, or people who choose not to vote, count against the recertification effort.

The Iowa State Education Association, which represents teachers, has been critical of the law since it passed in 2017. ISEA President Joshua Brown says if politicians were held to the same standards, reelection would be an impossibility.

“If the governor had to get a majority of people to vote yes to let her stay in office, if you counted every single person that didn’t vote against her, that would not happen.”

He says even with the new school year starting, his locals are preparing for how to run an election and ensure members are aware it’s happening.

The election period will run for two weeks in mid-October.

The South Dakota Supreme Court has ruled in favor of landowners on the route of a proposed CO2 pipeline in a case that questions whether the company behind the project should be allowed to use eminent domain.

Multiple lawsuits from landowners challenged Summit Carbon Solutions’ legal right to survey private property without consent. They also argued that Summit is not a common carrier, which is necessary to use eminent domain.

The ruling states that granting Summit common carrier status is premature at this point and sent it back to the lower courts for further litigation.

A spokesperson with Summit said, “We are evaluating the South Dakota Supreme Court's decision and look forward to providing the information requested to the district court that reaffirms our role as a common carrier, and that CO2 is a commodity.”

The Sierra Club of Iowa says the court’s decision is a win for landowners.

Landowners in Iowa are also challenging a state survey law. Oral arguments in front of the Iowa Supreme Court will be held on Oct. 8

Scams involving taxes have been around for some time, but the Internal Revenue Service says they are becoming more sophisticated, and now operate online.

The IRS is partnering with state tax agencies and private groups to combat the growth of scams targeting taxpayers and tax systems.

Terry Lemons, a spokesperson for the agency, says many of these scams now circulate on social media.

“What’s different now is we’re seeing a lot of social media activity on this, and a lot of people only get their information off social media and there’s a lot of bad advice circulating about tax issues on social media. And that’s part of what led us to this effort.”

One scam involves so-called “ghost preparers.”

“These are people who take a large payment and promise a big refund. We call them ghost preparers because they don’t sign the tax return. And after the return’s filed and they make their money, they disappear, leaving the taxpayer on the hook for whatever consequences are there.”

Lemons says a new task force known as the Coalition Against Scam and Scheme Threats, or CASST, will counter the scams through enforcement and education. Along with the IRS and state agencies, the task force includes tax software companies and tax professional organizations. He says any time someone has a question about their taxes, they can call their local IRS branch.

A paid job training program in Des Moines will address barriers to entering the workforce for young adults experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

YSS, a nonprofit serving a variety of youth, held a ribbon cutting this week at its Rooftop Gardens hydroponic greenhouse to celebrate the first group of workers that started in July.

Samanthya Marlatt, director of youth empowerment and advocacy at is with YSS, said the main barriers for this cohort finding permanent work are housing, transportation and food access.

“We also have a little kitchenette. We keep it stocked with breakfast items, snacks, stuff to make lunches because what I’ve seen time and time again with workforce programs not designed for this population, is that they will come to programming and leave at noon or so because they don’t have food and they will have to go somewhere that has food.”

The program includes working in the greenhouse and meeting individual career goals, like earning degrees or certifications. Marlatt says the focus for the first few months is instilling hope in the young adults.

The goal at the end of the program is for each participant to secure a job or enroll in classes for college or trade school.

“They don’t have time to slow down, think about their passions, think about how they want to be connected to the community or sit in the classroom and be in a place to upskill to get higher level credentials or career pathways. We need to get them out of survival mode and into dreaming mode.”

Additional help is available in northwest Iowa for victims still trying to recover from historic flooding this summer.

Community Action Agency of Siouxland Executive Director Jean Logan says recovering from a natural disaster takes time and money.

“We've all learned a lot about what the limits of federal assistance are, and it's just not going to cover the amount of damage that some of the people have received. You know, people are getting bids to recover that it's going to take $120,000. Well, FEMA property loss caps out at $42,500.”

Logan says one of the biggest challenges is finding contractors to fix homes.

“We have a lot of people that have not got repairs done, that are living in campers, sometimes they're on their property. We still have people that have not had power restored to their homes.”

A long-term recovery group has been formed to help with building materials, food, financial support and mental health services for Woodbury County residents and areas just outside the Sioux City metro area.

Logan hopes the group will continue expanding into other communities as more organizations offer assistance.

The state of Iowa has launched a new website with the goal of making it easier for families to find child care.

Iowans can visit childcareconnect.iowa.gov to search for open child care slots near their home or on their route to work. The search can be filtered by location, type of child care, quality ratings and more. The website doesn’t include prices.

Kelly Garcia is director of the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. She says she struggled to find child care for her own kids, and this will be an important tool for parents. Garcia says it’ll also allow policymakers to figure out where child care shortages exist so they can consider targeted solutions.

“The power of this data is incredibly valuable to all involved. And again, nearly real-time, which allows us to make decisions today, but probably more importantly allows us to invest for our future.”

Gov. Kim Reynolds says it’ll help parents who need daycare and policymakers who want to see which parts of the state need more investment in child care.

“To our knowledge, we believe Iowa is the first state in the nation to integrate and display near real-time child care data from multiple sources in this way, while also improving our child care system statewide.”

State officials say the child care search website cost about $5 million and was paid for with federal American Rescue Plan funding. It’ll take an estimated $500,000 per year to maintain.

Read more.

An Iowan who has served on the Democratic National Committee for the past four years says there’s been a sea change within the party since Vice President Kamala Harris became the party’s presidential nominee.

Jodi Clemens of West Branch spoke with Radio Iowa from the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“The enthusiasm and the energy that has been brought in the past couple of weeks has just been amazing,” Clemens said. “I think we kind of forgot what it was like to feel optimistic and it’s just been really great. Volunteers have been pouring in from back home and we’re just having a really great time.”

Clemens, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 Iowa caucus campaign, described Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as “an inspiring pick” for vice president.

“Minnesota’s doing some amazing things up there, passing some of the legislation that we’d love to enable on a national level, you know, free school lunches for all kids,” Clemens said. “The things he’s been able to achieve, I think us Iowans are looking up there, we’re ready to take back our governorship and our Legislature and get some of our own progressive policies passed.”

Walz was the closing speaker at the convention last night.

Delegate C.J. Petersen of Templeton uses the word “outreach” to describe the message party activists are getting from the convention stage.

“Make sure we’re uncovering every stone and we’re doing everything we can,” Petersen said. “We don’t want to wake up the day after the election and wonder what we could have done differently.”

Petersen, who was born deaf, was a brief sign language interpreter on the floor of the convention Tuesday night. During the roll call of the states, Petersen signed what the state party chair said during Iowa’s half minute in the spotlight.

(Additional reporting in Chicago by Ashley Byrd, Learfield)

Sac County’s jail in Sac City has been in operation for over 80 years, and the county’s voters will decide in November whether a new jail should be built.

The Sac County Board of Supervisors is proposing that a new county jail be built across the street from the current one, then the old one would be used by the county sheriff’s office.

The supervisors have voted to put a nearly $11 million bond referendum on the General Election ballot to finance the two-phase project. According to the state jail inspector, Sac County has the second-oldest jail in Iowa and it does not meet current safety standards, putting staff, inmates and the public at risk.

Iowa’s oldest county jail is in Pocahontas. Last November, Pocahontas County voters overwhelmingly approved $8.5 million in bonding for a new 18-bed jail.

(Abby Ward, KCIM)

Organizers for the Farm Progress Show near Boone are preparing for around 150,000 people across the three-day event next week.

Don Tourte is the senior vice president of sales and events for Farm Progress.

He says farmers looking for the latest in agriculture technology are the core audience.

“There really is nothing like the Farm Progress Show when it comes to the world of agriculture. And I’m a little bit biased because obviously I’ve been doing this for a while. But everyone should come see this. Everyone should appreciate what’s going on. Everyone should appreciate what it takes to raise the food that we, the food and fiber that we have every day in America.”

The Farm Progress Show draws in more than 600 exhibitors showcasing everything from the latest combine design to apps that identify pests in the field.

The show will run from Aug. 27-29.

This is the 8th year in Boone. The location alternates with Decatur, Ill.

Inflation is making it harder for many families to afford everything on required back-to-school supply lists this year.

In Iowa, teachers may spend an average of $700 a year on supplies. That's more than Nebraska and South Dakota, but less than Missouri–where teacher spending can reach as high as $1,300.

Kristen Beinecke is a Missouri kindergarten teacher. She says her community bands together to help keep schools stocked. Still, needs arise.

“I think when that happens the teachers do provide it. It's in our makeup. It's in who we are. I always say that being a teacher is a calling and not a career. It's a calling and not a job.”

Over her 24 years in the classroom, Beinecke says she has spent thousands of dollars of her own money on supplies.

The National Education Association, a teachers union, says inflation has raised the prices of school essentials by more than 20% in recent years. Teachers and schools often depend on nonprofits and donations also to fill the gap.

Read more from Holly Edgell.

A courtroom heard emotional victim impact statements during the sentencing of an Algona man for the shooting death of an Algona police officer last year.

A judge in Kossuth County this morning handed down a mandatory sentence of life behind bars without parole to 44-year-old Kyle Ricke. A jury in Dickinson County convicted him of first-degree murder last month.

Ricke said he was sorry for killing Algona Officer Kevin Cram.

“Every night, I pray for forgiveness for the family. I'm very regretful for the pain and hurt that I caused them, and I pray that one day that they can forgive me for my horrible actions.”

After Ricke told the court he was sorry for shooting Cram, Cram’s father responded.

“You ambushed him like a coward. After he was on the ground, defenseless, you put three more bullets in his back. That is the very definition of a yellow, back-shooting coward, and that is you.”

Cram was shot eight times at close range after arriving to arrest Ricke on a warrant for misdemeanor harassment.

“You not only destroyed a family and children's lives, but your own family and an entire community with your selfishness,” said Cram’s wife, Lara.

The packed Kossuth County courtroom also heard an emotional recording of one of Cram’s three sons crying because he misses his dad.

Iowans are being warned to be very careful when posting videos of themselves on social media.

Jim Temmer with the Better Business Bureau says criminals are using audio from online videos to fake people’s voices in scam calls.

“If you put anything out there that has your voice in it — not very long, it’s something like eight or ten seconds — they can use software then to generate your voice saying anything.”

Temmer says scammers are banking on people’s trust of them to trick people into other scams, like sending money transfers or giving up personal information.

“A friend of yours, a relative, gets a call from you saying, ‘Hey, I’m in trouble. I need some help right now,’ and it not only sounds like you, but scammers also have the ability to spoof phone numbers.”

The best way to prevent this from happening is to only share your videos with your friends and family. Temmer warns to keep a close eye on friend requests to make sure they are not from phony accounts.

A new state law to address chronic absenteeism requires notifying parents by certified letter if a student misses school for eight days in a semester. After additional absences, there must be an in-person meeting with a parent or guardian.

The most recent data shows absenteeism is remarkably widespread in Iowa schools.

“The levels of chronic absence tend to be highest in the high school level and then middle school and then elementary,” says Anne Discher, executive director of Common Good Iowa, “But there’s no doubt that even at the elementary level we’re seeing high levels of chronic absence.”

Advocates of the new law say regular attendance at school is a habit that will carry over into adulthood and much of what happens in a classroom cannot be learned through make-up work. According to a national group called Attendance Works, one in four Iowa students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year. Discher says that means they missed 10% or more of school days, for any reason.

“It could be sickness, it could be vacations, it could be any number of things,” Discher says, “But the idea is that when kids are absent for any reason, they’re not getting the instruction they need that day.”

Discher is hoping more recent data could show improvement, but she said some students just haven’t reconnected with school after the pandemic.

"Certainly we would encourage districts to really start out with supportive techniques to really help reengage students in school,” Discher said.

Under Iowa law, if a student misses 20% of school days in a semester, a meeting of the student, a parent or guardian and the county attorney will be scheduled.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is awarding $7.2 million to housing developers that have plans to build new homes and apartments in communities hit by severe storms and flooding this year.

Reynolds announced the program last month to supplement government assistance in areas covered by federal disaster declarations.

The funding announced Tuesday supports 175 new housing units in six communities.

Much of the money is going toward projects in flooded cities in northwest Iowa. In Spencer, which saw record flooding back in June, developers plan to use the money to build 27 single-family homes there, and another 24 multi-family units. In Rock Valley, four different projects will share in the state funding. Other projects were approved in Rock Rapids, Cherokee, Minden and Crescent.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority will continue taking applications until the program reaches its $10 million limit.

A separate state program is available to help current homeowners in FEMA disaster areas pay for repairs.

A judge has denied a request for a new trial from the man who was convicted last month in the September 2023 shooting death of Algona Police Officer Kevin Cram.

Attorneys for 44-year-old Kyle Lou Ricke filed a motion on Aug. 5 requesting a new trial, following his conviction on a charge of first-degree murder back in July. In that motion, Attorney Barbara Westphal argued that the jury’s verdict of guilty was contrary to the evidence presented during trial, and insufficient to prove the premeditation required for a conviction on a charge of first-degree murder.

Following a video conference on Monday, Judge Nancy Whittenburg denied the defendant’s request for a new trial on Tuesday.

In the ruling, Judge Whittenburg writes, “The Iowa Criminal Jury Instructions defining 'willful,' 'deliberate,' 'premeditate' and 'malice aforethought' do not require any particular length of time before the act.

She goes on to say the defendant's “actions of walking away from his conversation with Officer Cram, retrieving a firearm, and then returning to where Cram was standing to unload all or nearly all of his firearm’s magazine into Cram’s body is sufficient to suggest 'willful,' 'deliberate' and 'premeditated' conduct. These acts also suggest malice.”

With the motion for a new trial denied, Ricke’s sentencing will continue as scheduled Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. The first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

This September, residents in the Cedar Rapids Community School District will decide whether to continue its tax levy for school facility maintenance and equipment.

CRCSD is the second-largest school district in the state and Superintendent Tawana Grover says for 50 years, the voter-approved Physical Plant and Equipment Levy, or PPEL, has been an important pot of money for the district.

“Within the Cedar Rapids Community School District, we're taking care of 32 buildings. That’s huge, right? With the PPEL funding, we're able to take care of the upkeep of our facilities, to take care of some of the basic needs for our students.”

Last year, voters said no to the district’s bond for new buildings. This special election does not include any of the projects from that plan. If renewed, PPEL would provide more than $10 million over ten years for facilities, equipment, security and other improvements.

Grover says since the district has already been putting aside the money for 50 years, reupping this September wouldn’t impact tax rates.

“I'm not asking the community for one more cent. We're just renewing things, taking care of business the way that they've been taking care of for the last 50 years. And we want to keep doing it for the next 50 years to come.”

Today is the first day voters in the district can receive absentee ballots or vote early in person. The special election is Sept. 10.

Ashley Byrd

/

Radio Iowa

Iowa delegates to the Democratic National Convention cast their votes in a ceremonial roll call Tuesday night.

Party officials announced earlier this month that the Iowa delegation was unanimously supporting Harris as their party’s presidential nominee, but the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Arab American Caucus instead voted present. All the other Iowa delegates supported the Harris-Walz ticket.

Each state chose an upbeat dance tune for their time in the spotlight. Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart made the announcement as "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang played.

“The Tall Corn State of Iowa, the state that launched Barack Obama on his way to the presidency, the state that put ‘Education’ on its state quarter and the state that feeds and fuels the world casts one vote present and 45 votes for the next president of the United States of America, Kamala Harris,” Hart said.

Obama won Iowa’s 2008 caucuses and carried the state in the 2008 and 2012 general elections. Donald Trump won Iowa in 2016 and 2020.

Polls this year in Iowa have consistently shown Trump leading Joe Biden by a significant margin, but Brian Jackson, a delegate from Solon, said having Harris at the top of the ticket could make a big difference.

“Maybe folks who were not 100% happy with some of Biden’s policies — he’s done a lot of great things, there are some things that people might disagree with — I think we’re going to see a lot of those people in the middle of the road, and even people on the Republican side, realize that what we’re trying to do is bring people together," Jackson said during an interview in the convention hall.

The co-founder of the company operating a baby formula factory in southern Iowa said there is an opportunity for significant growth in production capacity and the workforce at the plant in Allerton.

Ron Belldegrun is the CEO of ByHeart, which bought the DairiConcepts plant in Allerton after using the facility in 2019 during trials of its new recipe for baby formula.

“After six years of development, we launched as the first new infant formula manufacturer in over 15 years,” Belldegrun said.

Baby formula recalls and subsequent shortages in 2022 highlighted the fact that three companies controlled 90% of the market. ByHeart’s production of baby formula began in March of 2022. It bought the Allerton plant in 2023.

ByHeart uses whole milk from grass-fed cows and other ingredients in the powder that’s currently produced in Allerton, but canned and packaged at a facility in Oregon. Belldegrun said ByHeart invested “very heavily” in the Allerton plant to make it a “state of the art” baby formula factory. There are now 100 people employed at the facility.

“We’ve increased the workforce by nearly 40%. Now that facility is one of the only facilities to come online to support this critically important domestic supply chain since the shortage.”

ByHeart, which also owns plants in Pennsylvania and Oregon, currently produces enough formula to feed half a million babies a year.

Belldegrun said the company has a “big vision” for what’s next in Allerton. Engineers are drawing up plans to add packaging and canning to the Allerton plant, and Belldegrun said he’s had “productive discussions” with government officials, university researchers, farmers and other ingredient suppliers about creating what he describes as “an ecosystem” around the southern Iowa facility.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority Board has approved state incentives for businesses in northern Iowa.

IEDA spokesperson Kanan Kappelman said A-1 Mobile Storage Service in Manchester is planning a nearly $6 million expansion. The company makes products out of shipping containers and plans to construct a new 60,000-square-foot facility and create eight new jobs.

Ranco Fertiservice, a company in Sioux Rapids, is receiving a $500,000 grant to help replace flooded equipment. They make dry fertilizer blending and handling equipment for ag fertilizer retailers.

Kappelman said the company plans to spend $2 million on the project but won't create any new jobs. She said the modernization will increase efficiency and the employees will also be able to gain new skills.

Proposed ordinances affecting the unhoused population in Des Moines were not on the agenda at Monday night’s city council meeting. But that didn’t stop several of those in attendance from speaking out against them.

One new ordinance would impose a $50 fine for sleeping in a public space. Another ordinance would be amended to shorten the amount of time someone has to remove their belongings from public property.

Luiz Gomez said many unhoused people have mental health and substance abuse issues, while others living on the street are fleeing domestic violence.

“Fining people $50 and taking them to jail, to put a simple misdemeanor in their record, will make it harder for them to obtain housing. So, do you really think that will help folks get out of the situation they’re facing?”

Mayor Connie Boesen has said the city is working with service providers, and Des Moines has done more than any other city in Iowa to provide affordable housing.

The Des Moines City Council has tentatively scheduled a third and final reading of the ordinances at a Sept. 16 meeting. After the second reading, only Ward 3 councilmember Josh Mandelbaum voted against the ordinances.

A national organization has singled out a northwest Iowa city for its diversity. The Same House, based in Atlanta, is hosting an event on Wednesday called Tables Across America in Orange City. The goal is for people to bond over food, conversation and other activities.

Orange City Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Mike Hofman said Tables Across America usually happens in larger locations, but Orange City was chosen for the way it embraces new residents, including people from Ukraine, South America and China.

“Sometimes rural, small America gets overpassed by some of these larger organizations because they just think there's nothing going on in these communities. And there certainly is.”

Hofman said the demographics of Orange City have grown more diverse because of new residents moving into town from other counties.

“The only way that we're going to continue to grow is by having new demographics come to town. And it's a great way for us to get those folks integrated into the community — doing events like this and inviting them — and then also, trying to get them connected with local service organizations and ways that they can be involved in the community is always a good thing.”

The Same House visit also coincides with an end-of-year celebration for the Orange City Arts Council.

The State Auditor’s Office has examined operations in the town of Zearing after the city’s former clerk missed two deadlines and the city was unable to collect property taxes for a year.

Zearing City Clerk Karen Davis was fired in July of 2022 after she failed to file the city’s budget with the state. It was a $191,000 hit to the budget for the town of about 500 residents, because no property taxes could be collected

Residents of Zearing asked the State Auditor’s Office to review how their town’s finances are handled. The general conclusion from the state auditor’s report is that the Zearing City Council needs “to exercise additional oversight of the city’s finances.”

The review found the city’s balance sheet was not kept up to date and one city employee was responsible for the city’s payroll, for handling cash and checks paid to the city and for paying all the city’s bills.

The auditor’s staff also reviewed when city funds were used to buy fuel and other items from a business owned by a member of the city council. The report concludes 72 charges were “not properly supported with an invoice.”

Madeleine C King

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Iowa Public Radio

Attendance at this year’s 170^th State Fair has set a record. Over 1,182,000 people attended the 2024 Iowa State Fair, which ended Sunday.

In addition to the overall record, a single day record of nearly 123,000 was set on Saturday, Aug.10. Daily attendance dropped below 100,000 on just two days — last Tuesday and Wednesday.

The previous attendance record was set in 2019.

One of the Iowa delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago said her friends in other countries are paying close attention to the presidential race.

State Sen. Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, joined the U.S. State Department in 1987 and had assignments in seven foreign countries before her retirement as a foreign service officer.

“I can guarantee you that people around the world have their eyes trained on the United States, both for this convention and they will be throughout the entire election period. I have friends who’ve been talking about it for months.”

Weiner said one reason she wanted to be a delegate at this week’s convention was because of President Biden’s foreign policy initiatives.

“We need to thank him for the last four years, for standing up for democracy, for strengthening alliances, for strengthening NATO, for standing up for and helping Ukraine, for really making us a country and a government that our foreign partners can work with and trust.”

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart said for the past two weeks she has been thinking about the speech Biden would give at the convention and how it would solidify his legacy.

The State of Iowa currently holds around $500 million in unclaimed funds and property.

State Treasurer Roby Smith paid a visit to the Des Moines Community Playhouse Monday to return a small portion — $316.80 — that had landed in the state’s fund of unclaimed property.

Money often lands with the state from unclaimed bank accounts and insurance policies. For the Playhouse, it came from a school district that had sent a group t