The Iowa Veterans Home is currently experiencing a COVID-19 outbreak. Families and guardians of loved ones living at the state-run facility in Marshalltown–the largest nursing home in Iowa–were notified on June 22 that four employees and five residents had tested positive that day. All lived or worked in the same building. An email sent on June 25 indicated that another resident in the same unit (Malloy 3) had tested positive, and all six affected residents were in the home’s COVID unit.

As of June 25, the long-term care dashboard on the state’s coronavirus website was showing eight positive cases and no recoveries at the Iowa Veterans Home within the last fourteen days.

The state website doesn’t break down how many cases have been identified among staff and how many among residents, or whether anyone has been hospitalized. Emails to relatives and guardians indicated that one Iowa Veterans Home resident was hospitalized on June 23 but had returned to the home by June 25.

Johnson County’s five supervisors voted unanimously on June 24 “to recognize Lulu Merle Johnson as the official eponym” of Iowa’s fourth-largest county. The previous namesake was Richard Mentor Johnson, who had no ties to the area but was U.S. vice president when the county was established in 1837.

Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan had floated the idea of choosing a different namesake four years ago, noting that Richard Mentor Johnson was a slave-owner who “killed Native Americans indiscriminately.” The idea picked up steam in the summer of 2020 after Ron McMullen published a guest column in the Iowa City Press-Citizen about the “particularly despicable” man for whom the county is named.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R, IA-02) did not appeal the $500 fine she received last month for going without a mask in the U.S. House chamber, the House Ethics Committee announced on June 25. A letter and accompanying statement from the committee’s chair and ranking member upheld the fine, noting that Miller-Meeks had not filed an appeal within the time allowed under House rules.

Two other Republicans fined for the same reason did appeal, saying they were vaccinated and in compliance with U.S. Centers for Disease Control guidance. A majority of Ethics Committee members did not agree to those appeals. (Unlike most House committees, the ethics panel has equal representation for both parties.)

Under House rules adopted early this year, a second violation of the mask mandate would have incurred a $2,500 fine. However, Miller-Meeks won’t need to worry. Under guidance issued earlier this month, House members and staff who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 are no longer subject to the mask mandate.

“Iowa’s law enforcement will always have my respect, and I will always have their back,” Governor Kim Reynolds declared while signing Senate File 342 on June 17. Sections 12 through 16 of the wide-ranging policing bill establish a “qualified immunity” standard for Iowa. Effective immediately upon the governor’s signature, state employees or law enforcement officers who violate individuals’ constitutional rights can be sued only if their conduct violated “clearly established” law, such that “every reasonable employee would have understood” the act was illegal.

The provisions were crafted to match decades-old federal qualified immunity standards, and to override an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that was more favorable to Iowans whose rights have been violated by police.

The new law will almost certainly be challenged. And while the conservative majority on the Iowa Supreme Court often defers to other branches of government, the justices may find that Senate File 342’s language on qualified immunity is incompatible with the Iowa Constitution.

“If someone tasked you with making an exhaustive list of who could profit from carbon sequestration, this is what you would come up with,” tweeted Chris Jones, a research engineer at the University of Iowa who has written extensively about agriculture and water quality.

He was referring to the Carbon Sequestration Task Force, which Governor Kim Reynolds established through a June 22 executive order. In a written statement touting the initiative, Reynolds said Iowa “is in a strong position to capitalize on the growing nationwide demand for a more carbon free economy.” She will chair the task force, and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig will co-chair.

The task force looks like a textbook greenwashing effort: deploying concern about about “sustainability” and “low carbon solutions” as cover for policies that will direct public money to large corporations in the energy and agriculture sectors.

One tell: Reynolds did not involve any of Iowa’s leading environmental organizations, which have long worked to reduce carbon emissions.

Bryan Burkhardt won the June 22 special election for a Johnston City Council seat despite a strong write-in campaign by local Republicans on behalf of Jim Gorsche. Unofficial results posted by the Polk County auditor’s office showed 1,032 votes for Burkhardt (51.1 percent), 783 write-in votes (38.8 percent), all but six of which were for Gorsche, and 203 votes for Adam Haar (10.1 percent).

Turnout was just under 14 percent, not bad for a summer local election, which received little media coverage.

Burkhardt, a Des Moines Area Community College professor and small business owner, will serve the remainder of Scott Syroka’s term, which runs through 2023. Elected to the council in 2019, Syroka resigned early this year to serve as deputy director of communications in the Biden-Harris administration’s Office of Personnel Management. John Temple has been filling the vacancy on the council since February; he didn’t compete in the special election.

Local elections are nonpartisan in Iowa, but Burkhardt and Haar, the top two vote-getters in the city’s May 25 primary, both had support from area Democrats. Gorsche finished third in the four-way primary.

Co-Diagnostics, the Utah-based company that provided hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 tests for the Test Iowa program, faced a U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation last year, Andrew Becker exclusively reported for the Salt Lake Tribune on June 17. Nomi Health, which signed no-bid contracts to provide COVID-19 testing with Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska, subcontracted with Co-Diagnostics for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.

Records obtained and sources interviewed by Becker indicated that Co-Diagnostics went to a small regional hospital in Utah to validate its PCR tests while seeking Food and Drug Administration approval, instead of using equipment at Utah’s Public Health Laboratory. Senior state officials pushed for allowing the tests to be used in the Test Utah program prior to FDA emergency use authorization. In addition, the FDA issued the emergency approval more quickly than expected, even though officials within the federal agency reportedly “had concerns because Co-Diagnostics tests were manufactured in China.” 

The SEC began asking Utah officials questions in late April, Becker’s reporting shows. That was a few weeks after Test Utah launched and one week after Governor Kim Reynolds announced her administration had partnered with the same Utah-based companies for Test Iowa.

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board will review advertisements featuring Governor Kim Reynolds, which were funded through federal COVID-19 relief dollars.

The board’s executive director Mike Marshall told Bleeding Heartland on June 18 that some commercials from the “Step Up, Stop the Spread” campaign launched last November “are now under review by the Ethics Board.” Earlier this month, State Auditor Rob Sand asked the board to consider whether the ads violated Iowa’s law banning state officials from engaging in “self-promotion with taxpayer funds.”

Marshall said he anticipates the ethics board will discuss the matter in closed session at its next meeting, scheduled for August 12.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled on June 18 that part of the city of Waterloo’s “ban the box” ordinance can remain in effect despite a 2017 law prohibiting local governments from regulating “terms or conditions of employment.”

The city adopted the ordinance in November 2019 to address economic racial disparities. Because African Americans are more likely to have a criminal record, they are adversely affected by job applications that require a person to note whether they have ever been arrested or convicted of a crime.

Under Waterloo’s ordinance, employers may not inquire about past convictions, arrests, or pending criminal charges “during the application process,” but may do so after extending “a conditional offer of employment.” The court found that was allowed, because it regulates only “the time when an employer can inquire into a prospective employee’s criminal history,” which is not “a term or condition of employment.”

However, the Iowa Supreme Court held that state law preempts other portions of Waterloo’s ordinance, which prohibit employers from making an “adverse hiring decision” based on an applicant’s criminal history.

Democratic Representative Cindy Axne (IA-03) and Republican Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04) voted on June 17 to repeal the 2002 authorization for the use of military force against Iraq. House members approved the legislation by 268 votes to 161, with 49 Republicans joining all but one Democrat to support the repeal.

Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-01) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02) were among the 160 Republicans to vote no.

None of Iowa’s representatives released a statement about this vote or mentioned it on their social media feeds. Bleeding Heartland sought comment from staff for all four members on the morning of June 18, but none replied. I will update this post as needed if anyone explains their reasons for voting yes or no on this effort to “rein in presidential war-making powers for the first time in a generation.” Jennifer Steinhauer reported for the New York Times,

Juneteenth National Independence Day is now a federal holiday, under legislation President Joe Biden signed today. The bill commemorating the end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865 moved through Congress at unusual speed so it could take effect in time for this weekend. Most federal government workers will have Friday the 18th off, since the new holiday falls on a Saturday.

The U.S. Senate approved the bill through unanimous consent on June 15. Iowa’s junior Senator Joni Ernst was one of the 60 co-sponsors (including eighteen Republicans) in the upper chamber. Senator Chuck Grassley didn’t co-sponsor the bill, but at least he didn’t object to its passage. He is one of only two currently serving senators who voted against establishing a holiday to honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1983. (The other is Richard Shelby of Alabama.)

U.S. House members approved the Juneteenth bill on June 16 by 415 votes to 14 (roll call). All four representatives from Iowa voted yes, which probably would not have been the case if Steve King had fended off Randy Feenstra’s primary challenge last year.

A highly competitive primary is shaping up for an open Iowa Senate seat covering part of Cedar Rapids. Democratic State Senator Rob Hogg announced on June 14 that he will not seek re-election in 2022. Two candidates have already launched their campaigns, and more local Democrats are considering.

Today’s featured wildflowers are the opposite of “showy.” If you’ve spent any time in the woods or near woodland edges, you’ve probably walked by these plants without noticing.

Honewort (Cryptotaenia canadensis), sometimes known as Canadian honewort, is native to most of the U.S. and Canada east of the Rocky Mountains. Like bedstraw, wild chervil, enchanter’s nightshade, and Virginia stickseed, honewort plants have tiny white flowers and thrive in shady wooded habitats.

Deer don’t care for honewort plants, but according to the website of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas, “Its young leaves and stems may be used as a seasoning like parsley or as a boiled green; the roots may be cooked and eaten like parsnips.” However, “Caution is advised because many similar species of the carrot family are deadly poisonous.” I have never attempted to eat any part of honewort plants. I’ll leave them for the many kinds of insects that are attracted to the flowers or feed on the foliage.

Democratic State Senator Liz Mathis told Iowa news outlets on June 14 that she is “seriously considering” running for Congress next year and will announce her plans in late July.

Mathis won her first race in a 2011 special election for Iowa Senate district 34, covering much of the Cedar Rapids suburbs. She has since been re-elected three times. Republicans did not invest in Senate district 34 in 2012, made an unsuccessful play there in 2016, and opted not to field a candidate against Mathis in 2020.

My Democratic contacts in Linn County expect Mathis to run in the first Congressional district. I am inclined to agree. If she weren’t leaning toward running, she would probably not disclose her plans until after Iowa adopts new maps, which is unlikely to happen before September.

Mathis retired last month from Four Oaks, which provides services to children in the Cedar Rapids area. So she could devote full-time efforts to a Congressional campaign whenever the state legislature is not in session. Since her Iowa Senate term runs through 2024, she doesn’t need to give up her current office to compete for IA-01.

My Republican contacts expect U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson to run for U.S. Senate if Chuck Grassley retires. For the purposes of this post, I’m assuming Grassley will seek an eighth term, and Hinson will seek re-election in IA-01.

State Representative Ras Smith became Iowa’s first well-known Democratic candidate for governor on June 15, declaring in an upbeat campaign video, “I believe that Iowa’s greatest days are ahead of us.”

Iowa House Democrats elected State Representative Jennifer Konfrst as the new minority leader on June 14. She is the first woman to lead the House Democratic caucus, which now has 21 women and 20 men. (That’s down from the record number of 24 Democratic women among the 47 Iowa House Democrats who served in 2019.)

Konfrst had served as House minority whip since late last year and appeared to be the only contender to succeed Todd Prichard, who announced early this month that he would soon step down as caucus leader.

Women have now held the top positions in each party’s caucus in each Iowa legislative chamber. Mary Lundby became the top Iowa Senate Republican in 2006 and served as co-majority leader in the chamber, evenly split 25-25 at the time. She also served as Senate minority leader in 2007.

Governor Kim Reynolds has been lucky at key points in her political career. Terry Branstad passed over more experienced contenders to select her as his 2010 running mate, allowing a little-known first-term state senator to become a statewide elected official. Six years later, Donald Trump won the presidency and named Branstad as an ambassador, setting Reynolds up to become governor without having to win a GOP primary first.

Most important, Reynolds has enjoyed a Republican trifecta her entire four years as governor. Not only has she been able to sign much of her wish list into law, she has not needed to worry that state lawmakers would closely scrutinize her administration’s work or handling of public funds.

During the legislative session that wrapped up last month, the GOP-controlled House and Senate rejected every attempt to make the governor’s spending decisions more transparent. They declined to hold even one hearing about questionable uses of federal COVID-19 relief funds or practices at state agencies that disadvantaged thousands of Iowans.

Every U.S. Senate Republican, including Iowa’s Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley, blocked debate last week on a bill designed “to provide more effective remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex.”

Like most Senate actions, a motion to proceed with debate on a bill requires at least 60 votes to pass. The 49 to 50 party-line vote on June 8 was Republicans’ second formal use of a filibuster this year. The first blocked a bill authorizing a bipartisan investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The Paycheck Fairness Act “has been on the Democratic wish list since 1997,” Jonathan Weisman reported for the New York Times. When Democrats controlled the U.S. House, they approved similar legislation in 2008, 2009, and 2019.

For nearly 60 years, federal law has banned employers from paying men and women differently for “substantially equal jobs.” But the Equal Pay Act of 1963 has failed to adequately address gender-based wage discrimination. A 2019 study found “Women’s median earnings are lower than men’s in nearly all occupations.”

Jerry Foxhoven asserts in a new lawsuit that Governor Kim Reynolds and her senior staff forced him out as Iowa Department of Human Services director “because he refused to engage in illegal activity” and to prevent him from seeking legal advice about possible misuse of federal Medicaid funds.

The petition filed in Polk County District Court on June 9 closely tracks allegations Foxhoven made in a wrongful termination claim soon after he resigned under pressure in 2019. Reynolds, her chief of staff Sara Craig Gongol, and her former senior legal counsel Sam Langholz are named defendants in addition to the state of Iowa.

Foxhoven’s court filing says the events leading to his ouster centered on a dispute over payments from DHS for work done by Reynolds’ deputy chief of staff Paige Thorson. The DHS director agreed in early 2018 to have the agency pay 69 percent of Thorson’s salary and benefits, as she assisted Iowa’s new Medicaid director Mike Randol. Foxhoven signed a similar agreement for the next fiscal year, which ran through June 2019. (Several of the governor’s staffers are mostly paid by other state agencies; the longstanding practice helps Reynolds keep more staff on payroll than her budget appropriation could support.)

Foxhoven says that in February or March 2019, he told Craig Gongol in a telephone conversation “that Randol was now adequately familiar with Iowa’s health care network,” adding that “Thorson was no longer performing duties that furthered the mission of Iowa Medicaid and that he did not believe DHS could legally divert federal Medicaid dollars to pay her salary.”

In the spring of 2019, Republican lawmakers approved an extra $200,000 for the governor’s office, supposedly for health and tax policy analysts. Foxhoven says he “believed that the issue was resolved,” and spoke with Craig Gongol in early June “hoping to confirm that DHS would not continue paying any portion of the Thorson’s salary with Medicaid funds in the next fiscal year.”

However, the governor’s chief of staff indicated that she expected the agency to keep compensating Thorson. Foxhoven “questioned the legality of such an arrangement” and asked Craig Gongol to consult with legal counsel Langholz, but she refused.

According to Foxhoven, he told Craig Gongol “that he intended to ask the assistant attorney generals assigned to DHS for a legal opinion” on June 18, after the expected conclusion of a federal trial they were working on. But he wasn’t able to send that email, because Craig Gongol and Langholz asked for his resignation on June 17. Foxhoven says during that meeting, the governor’s senior staff “demanded the immediate return of all of Foxhoven’s state issued equipment and told him not to return to his office.”

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants terminated Foxhoven:

• “in order to prevent him from enforcing his statutory right to disclose information he reasonably and in good faith believed constituted a violation of the law, mismanagement, a gross abuse of funds or abuse of authority […]”;
• “in order to prevent him from disclosing information he reasonably and in good faith believed constituted a violation of the law, mismanagement, a gross abuse of funds or abuse of authority […]”;
• “because he refused to engage in illegal activity; that is committing Medicaid fraud and misuse of federal monies by continuing to pay Thorson’s salary despite the fact that she was no longer providing any duties relating to Medicaid or otherwise furthering the mission of DHS […]”; and
• interfered with and prevented him from consulting with the Iowa Attorney General’s office about his agency continuing to pay Thorson’s salary.

Foxhoven told journalists in 2019 he would not have objected to using Medicaid funds to support Thorson’s compensation if legal experts determined the practice was still allowable. But he wanted a letter from the Attorney General’s office. That way, in case state or federal auditors questioned the payments later, “There might be a difference of opinion between the auditor and the AG’s office, but it isn’t a matter of Foxhoven diverting funds.”

State agency directors are at-will employees, who serve at the pleasure of the governor. But one exception to the at-will doctrine is firing someone in violation of public policy–for instance, because they refuse to engage in illegal conduct. Foxhoven’s lawsuit alleges that his “termination violates well established public policy of the State of Iowa as defined by statute, regulation, and judicial decision.”

The court filing notes that Foxhoven has suffered “substantial loss of earnings, insurance benefits, retirement benefits and other employee benefits” as well as “emotional distress and damage to his reputation.” It also argues that he’s entitled to punitive damages against Reynolds, Craig Gongol, and Langholz, because their termination of his employment “was willful and wanton and done in reckless disregard of his rights.”

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to Bleeding Heartland’s request for comment on the lawsuit. The Iowa Attorney General’s Office had no comment. Langholz has worked there since late last year, representing the Reynolds administration in several high-profile cases.

Reynolds said in 2019 that “many factors” influenced her decision to ask for the DHS director’s resignation. (The agency has faced lawsuits and investigations over its management of the State Training School for Boys and the Glenwood Resource Center for the intellectually disabled.) In early 2020, the governor told reporters “she was ‘not happy’ with the response she received” about an increase in deaths at Glenwood.

Reynolds also claimed Foxhoven “never raised concerns with me or my staff about the salary agreements in question, and he never asked my staff for a legal opinion or said he would be reaching out to the Attorney General’s office for one.”

Final note: Records I received while investigating the governor’s office spending indicated that DHS did not end up paying any portion of Thorson’s salary during fiscal year 2020, which began in July 2019. However, DHS did pay 100 percent of the salary and benefits of the governor’s new health policy adviser Liz Matney from July 2019 through mid-March 2020. Thorson and Matney were among 21 permanent staffers in Reynolds’ office who had about 62 percent of their compensation from mid-March through June 2020 covered through federal COVID-19 relief funds.

Appendix: Petition filed in Polk County District Court on June 9

Plaintiffs challenging Iowa’s manifold new restrictions on voting amended their complaint on June 9 to incorporate provisions in a law Governor Kim Reynolds signed the previous day.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa (LULAC) filed suit in Polk County District Court in March, charging that Senate File 413 violated Iowa constitutional provisions on the right to vote, free speech, free assembly, and equal protection. Their revised petition asks the court to invalidate two sections of Senate File 568 as well as thirteen sections of the law enacted earlier this year.

U.S. Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley were part of bipartisan majorities that confirmed President Joe Biden’s first three judicial nominees this week. But the senators are likely to oppose Biden’s picks for judgeships higher than the District Court level.

Scott County’s newly-appointed Republican Auditor Kerri Tompkins will serve through 2022 after county Democrats failed to force a special election for the office.

Scott County Democrats leader Elesha Gayman announced on June 8 that activists collected 6,211 signatures during the previous two weeks, about 3,000 short of the threshold for calling a special election to fill a vacancy at the county level. Unusually high turnout in 2020 raised the bar for collecting signatures equaling at least 10 percent of those who cast ballots in the previous presidential election. Adding to the organizing burden, a law Republicans enacted earlier this year shortened the time frame for such petition drives to only fourteen days.

Gayman said Democrats will not “lay down” in light of what she described as “voter suppression.” The next focus for volunteers in Iowa’s third-largest county will be contacting some 10,000 voters whose registrations were recently moved to inactive status, under the same law Governor Kim Reynolds signed in March.

Approximately 702,800 Iowans were enrolled in some version of the Medicaid program last month, up by roughly 100,000 since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, according to analysis by Charles Gaba at the ACA Signups website.

The biggest increase was in the Iowa Health and Wellness Plan, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Gaba’s analysis indicates that some 225,300 Iowans were participating in that plan as of May 2021, up from about 177,200 people fourteen months earlier.

Enrollment in traditional Medicaid increased by a smaller rate from about 425,000 in March 2020 to some 477,500 last month. The federal government recently released statistics on state level Medicaid enrollments from July 2019 through December 2020. Gaba’s estimates for 2021 are based on monthly reports published by the Iowa Department of Human Services, adjusted to compensate for how closely the state’s numbers tracked with the federal figures for 2020.

Gaba commented on his website,

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board may discuss whether to regulate campaigns pre-selecting recurring donation options, according to executive director Mike Marshall.

In May, the Federal Election Commission unanimously recommended that Congress ban the practice, which Donald Trump’s campaign used to raise enormous sums in 2020. Many of Trump’s supporters did not realize they were committing to recurring gifts and later asked for refunds or filed fraud complaints.

At least three Iowa Republican office-holders–Governor Kim Reynolds and U.S. Representatives Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks–adopted the tactic this year. Some of their fundraising pages on the WinRed platform have two boxes pre-selected: one for a recurring monthly donation, and one for an additional contribution on a specific date in the near future.

During the closing days of the Iowa legislature’s 2021 session, Republicans accomplished one task that eluded them in 2020: getting a constitutional amendment on abortion halfway toward appearing on a statewide ballot. I expected the House and Senate to approve the measure quickly, emboldened by a larger majority in the lower chamber, where the proposal stalled last year.

Instead, Republicans spent months haggling over how the amendment would be phrased, hoping to make this effort more palatable to Iowans who currently oppose it.

A deep dive into the experiences of down-ballot candidates provides much food for thought for Iowa Democrats hoping to improve on last year’s dismal performance.

The authors of “Playing to Win,” released last month, are three activists with professional backgrounds in marketing. Dave Miglin was a candidate for the board of trustees for Polk County’s public hospital, Broadlawns. Kathryn Kaul-Goodman chairs the Mahaska County Democrats and ran for supervisor in that rural southeast Iowa county. Jean Kaul-Brown helped with both Miglin’s and Kaul-Goodman’s campaign and (along with Miglin) is communications co-chair for the Polk County Democrats.

I recommend downloading the full report. It’s a quick read:

COVID-19 vaccinations increased significantly in Ohio after Governor Mike DeWine announced vaccinated residents would be eligible for five $1 million lottery drawings or full-ride scholarships to state universities. In contrast, vaccinations have been plummeting in Iowa lately. Most county health departments have been declining their vaccine allocations. Average daily shots are down 80 percent from their peak in early April.

Eighteen states and Washington, DC are now ahead of Iowa in terms of percentage of the population fully vaccinated, and 22 states plus DC have a higher percentage of residents who have received at least one shot. Less than two weeks ago, Iowa ranked sixteenth in the country on that metric.

Governor Kim Reynolds isn’t worried, though. She told reporters on June 2, “I am really happy with where we’re at” in terms of vaccinations. From Brianne Pfannenstiel’s article for the Des Moines Register,

A special investigation by the State Auditor’s office asserted on June 3 that Governor Kim Reynolds violated Iowa law by using $152,585 in federal COVID-19 relief funds to purchase “online and televised ads containing the Governor’s voice, image, and name.”

Less than 30 minutes after the auditor’s report was published, Reynolds responded in a news release that the law “clearly allows” such use of public money in the context of a public health disaster emergency.

A few hours later, State Auditor Rob Sand defended his conclusions in a new written statement.

My non-lawyer’s reading of the relevant statutes aligns with the governor’s interpretation. But while legal points could be argued, one indisputable fact is that all parties involved should have discussed these findings prior to the report’s publication, instead of duking it out in news releases today.

UPDATE: Konfrst was elected House minority leader on June 14. Original post follows.

Iowa House Democrats will choose a new leader of their 41-member caucus on June 14. The heavy favorite will be State Representative Jennifer Konfrst, who has served as minority whip (the second-ranking role) since late last year.

State Representative Todd Prichard announced on June 2 that he will step down from the leadership position he has held since shortly after the 2018 election.

Konfrst declined to comment for the record on the coming leadership contest. Several Iowa House Democrats indicated on June 2 they were not planning to run for caucus leader. Those included State Representative Jo Oldson, who served as minority whip in 2019 and 2020. Oldson added that she is supporting Konfrst for the position.

If you’ve walked along a woodland edge or near running water lately, you may have encountered a perennial woody vine that is “very valuable as a source of cover and food to many insects and animals.”

Wild grape (Vitis riparia) is also known as riverbank grape, because it often grows near rivers or streams. According to the Illinois Wildflowers site, it can do well in prairies near woods or water sources and thrives on disturbed ground, such as areas near railroads. Minnesota Wildflowers notes,

Some consider Riverbank Grape a weedy pest, sometimes creating dense masses and smothering other plants and even small trees. Though it can become aggressive along woodland edges and other disturbed areas where seed is spread, it is typically better behaved in the shadier riverbanks and mature forests where it competes well with other forest species.

I took most of the pictures enclosed below along North Walnut Creek in Windsor Heights in late May.

Paul Trombino III will be the next public works director of city of Greeley, Colorado, the city announced on May 28. He was hired following a national search, according to a news release enclosed in full below. The job was posted in February, so Trombino must have applied only weeks after becoming Iowa’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management director.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ office announced Trombino’s impending departure on May 20. The news surprised many observers, since the governor had worked closely with her chief operating officer for two years and awarded him a large bonus in February, ensuring he wouldn’t take a pay cut when transitioning to the Homeland Security position.

Trombino’s resignation from his Iowa government post becomes effective June 3. Reynolds hasn’t yet announced her choice to run the Homeland Security agency, which oversees disaster preparedness and relief operations and has administered tens of millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funds.

Most of the CARES Act funding transferred to Homeland Security is tied to the state or local match for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Public Assistance Program. Reynolds also approved a $1 million transfer for “State Government COVID Staffing,” from which $448,449 was used to cover personnel costs in the governor’s office. The remaining $551,551 set aside for that purpose remains unspent, a state database shows. A Homeland Security communications staffer told me last year, “Although that funding was transferred to our department to process, we are not the decision makers on how it will be spent.”

State Auditor Rob Sand contends that spending $400,000 to construct permanent fencing around Governor Kim Reynolds’ official residence reflects “out of whack” priorities favoring “insiders” over “outsiders.”

Sand regularly answers commenter questions during live videos posted on his political Facebook page. During his June 1 “Transparency Tuesday” session, one person asked, “how about that governor’s fence?” Beginning around the 8:15 mark, Sand replied,

My transcript:

Yeah, how about that governor’s fence. If you missed this, Jean’s comment is about the $400,000 that’s getting spent on a fence at Terrace Hill.

Threats should be taken seriously, and the governor has seen threats, but so did Governor Branstad. So did Governor Culver. So did Governor Vilsack. They didn’t build a fence.

And in the meantime, you know, year after year after year, we’ve seen a lot of violence in Iowa’s correctional facilities, which could have been fixed in a variety of ways, depending on who you ask. But we didn’t see much action. Until finally now, that two correctional officers actually got murdered, now they decided to provide additional funding.

So it’s just, to me, it’s a question of priorities and insiders versus outsiders. $400,000 for protection because of some threats that were not uncommon, versus years of assaults that essentially got nothing until people died.

Priorities are out of whack for who that’s serving.

A little later in the video, Sand agreed with a different commenter who characterized the Terrace Hill fence as “ridiculous.”

The Iowa Department of Public Safety approved plans to construct permanent fencing around the governor’s residence sometime during the summer of 2020, public records show. I have not been able to determine whether Reynolds or anyone on her staff advocated for beefed-up security. Public safety officials denied the decision was linked to protests or demonstrations occurring near Terrace Hill and said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had recommended perimeter fencing for years.

Sand’s comments during the June 1 video were not a one-off. A few days earlier, he drew the same comparison on his political Twitter feed.

In that Twitter thread, Sand linked to a recent Des Moines Register article by Daniel Lathrop, “Iowa prison staffing levels before Anamosa killings were near their lowest level in at least 30 years.”

Two decades of budget cuts left the people who guard Iowa’s prisons understaffed and overmatched by a growing prison population, a Des Moines Register investigation found. The issue is getting attention after the March slaying of two employees at the Anamosa prison, allegedly by a pair of prisoners.

The Register found that Iowa’s Department of Corrections in 2020 had:

-Close to the lowest number of correctional officers guarding its prisons in at least 30 years.

-Substantially fewer correctional officers working at eight of its nine prisons than it did five, 10 and 20 years earlier.

-A ratio of prisoners to correctional officers that had risen above the national average.

The Republican-controlled Iowa House and Senate recently approved a $20 million increase to the corrections budget for the next fiscal year. But Sand pointed out that happened only after two correctional officers were murdered, allegedly by an incarcerated person.

Reporters for the Cedar Rapids Gazette and KCRG-TV obtained public records in April showing that Iowa’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the Iowa Department of Corrections last year for workplace violations at the Anamosa facility. Inspectors noted a lack of “adequate and reliable means of communication for employees to summon assistance during violent attacks or calls for emergency aid,” and not enough employees continually available to respond to such emergencies.

Sand is widely seen as likely to challenge Reynolds in 2022. He recently ruled out seeking any federal office next year but acknowledged he’s still considering running for governor or for a second term as state auditor.

Top image: Screenshot from Rob Sand’s “Transparency Tuesday” video on June 1.

The state of Iowa should be able to pay the remainder on its contract to acquire the Workday software system once Governor Kim Reynolds signs the final appropriations bill lawmakers approved before adjourning on May 19.

Senate File 615, the so-called “standings” bill, allocates $23.23 million from the state’s general fund to the Office of Chief Information Officer during the current fiscal year, which ends on June 30. That money is to be used for “implementation of a new state central personnel, accounting, and budget system.”

UPDATE: The U.S. Senate passed the Sgt. Ketchum Rural Veterans Mental Health Act of 2021 by unanimous consent on June 24, and President Joe Biden signed it into law on June 30. Original post follows.

From the earliest Memorial Day observances organized by freed slaves following the Civil War, this holiday has focused on remembering military service members who died in wars. More than 26,700 Iowans have died in wartime service, with the Civil War accounting for nearly half of the fatalities.

Far too many Americans with military backgrounds die by their own hands. Hundreds of active-duty troops and more than 6,000 veterans take their own lives every year. That death toll exceeds the total U.S. military fatalities in Iraq from 2003 to 2020.

Iowa’s members of Congress have tried again this spring to improve mental health services for veterans. Unlike in previous years, legislation named after Sergeant Brandon Ketchum made it through the U.S. House and now awaits action in the Senate.

Racial disparities in Iowa’s COVID-19 vaccinations have narrowed during the eight weeks since all adults became eligible to get a shot. However, even with many vaccination sites now accepting walk-ins, reducing barriers associated with online scheduling, people of color and especially Black and Latino Iowans have received fewer doses per capita than white people.

In addition, county-level data show a wide gap between the Iowa counties with the highest and lowest vaccination rates. As in most other states, vaccination rates appear to be correlated with political and demographic features. Residents of more urban and more Democratic counties are more likely to be vaccinated than those living in rural and heavily Republican areas.

Scott County’s three Republican supervisors voted on May 25 to appoint Kerri Tompkins as the county’s new auditor, having considered no other candidates for the position, and giving members of the public no opportunity to comment.

The vacancy arose when Democratic Auditor Roxanna Moritz resigned just a few months into a four-year term. The three Republicans on the five-member board did not solicit applications for the vacancy or interview candidates. Rather, they decided to appoint Tompkins in a backroom deal, possibly violating Iowa’s open records law in the process.

The two Democrats on the Board of Supervisors wanted to hold a special election to determine Moritz’s replacement, but they didn’t have the votes to make it happen.

Local Democrats are trying to petition for a special election. But a law Republicans enacted earlier this year will make that task much more difficult.

U.S. Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley were among the 35 Republicans who voted on May 28 to block debate on a bill to form a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Since Senate rules require 60 votes for most motions, the 48 Democrats and six Republicans who supported the measure were unable to proceed to debate–even though they made up 61 percent of those present and voting.

Technically, today’s action was the first filibuster Republicans have executed since Democrats took control of the Senate following the January runoff elections in Georgia. However, GOP senators have prevented many other bills from coming to the floor by making clear they would filibuster.

In a written statement enclosed in full below, Grassley said the January 6 events are already being investigated, while Congress has ignored the “broader picture” of riots occurring elsewhere in the U.S. over the past year. (Protests that occurred in various cities last summer are hardly equivalent to an assault instigated by the president with the goal of disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.)

Earlier this week, Grassley told a Bloomberg News reporter he would support a January 6 commission more like the 9/11 commission “because that was a bipartisan commission chaired by people outside the Congress”–which is what the House-approved bill would create.

Ernst has not released a statement on today’s vote, but I will update this post as needed. She told Capitol Hill reporters on May 19 that the commission would not be balanced (despite equal representation for both parties), because of disparities in staffing and salaries. Ernst added, “Here we are five months later. What is the point? It’s turning into a political exercise.”

State Auditor Rob Sand told Douglas Burns of the Carroll Times Herald on May 27 that he won’t run for a federal office in 2022.

“I don’t want to be in D.C.; I don’t want to go to D.C.,” Sand told the Times Herald. “Maybe I would be more interested if my kids were out of the house, but they are 4 and 7. But even if my kids were out of the house, that would be a lot less time to hunt and fish. […]”

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board voted on May 26 to authorize a formal staff investigation of possible undisclosed lobbying of Governor Kim Reynolds’ office by the conservative group Heritage Action for America.

The board’s executive director and legal counsel Mike Marshall had been informally investigating the matter after Mother Jones published video of Heritage Action’s executive director bragging about helping to write voter suppression laws in Iowa and other states. Jessica Anderson told donors at a private meeting in April that her group had “worked quietly” with Iowa lawmakers to help draft and support a new election bill, getting it passed with “little fanfare.” But the Washington, DC based organization, which is affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, hadn’t registered a position on the bill or filed reports required of those who lobby state government.

My editorial bias is to feature wildflowers that are native to Iowa or at least to North America. But I make some exceptions for non-native plants that are prevalent here.

Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), more commonly known as creeping Charlie, is an invasive species with origins in Eurasia. European settlers brought these plants to this continent, probably for use in creating medicines. According to the USDA’s Forest Service website, this species was reported in Indiana as early as 1856 and in Colorado in 1906, “suggesting its westerly introduction and/or migration did not occur recently.”

Illinois Wildflowers lists preferred habitats: “floodplain forests, semi-shaded areas along rivers, powerline clearances in woodland areas, cemeteries, lawns and gardens, and miscellaneous waste areas.”

Most Iowans who are familiar with creeping Charlie know it as a “common lawn weed problem.” The University of Illinois Extension notes,

Bryan Burkhardt and Adam Haar were the top two vote-getters in a May 25 primary election for a Johnston City Council seat, according to unofficial results posted on the Polk County auditor’s website. Burkhardt and Haar will compete in a June 22 election to serve out the remainder of Scott Syroka’s term. Elected to the council in 2019, Syroka resigned early this year to serve as deputy director of communications in the Biden-Harris administration’s Office of Personnel Management.

Burkhardt, a professor at Des Moines Area Community College, received 682 votes (39.1 percent). Haar, a consultant for Wells Fargo, received 402 votes (23.0 percent). DuPont Pioneer’s associate general counsel Jim Gorsche finished third in the primary with 350 votes (20.1 percent), while Brei Johnson received 311 votes (17.8 percent).

City elections are nonpartisan in Iowa, but Burkhardt and Haar had support from many Democrats in the community. City council member Rhonda Martin endorsed Haar, while former State Representative Karin Derry was engaged in GOTV, urging residents to support either Burkhardt or Haar.

Most Iowans thinking about running for U.S. Senate in 2022 are waiting for Senator Chuck Grassley to tip his hand, probably sometime this fall. But fifth-generation farmer and former Crawford County Supervisor Dave Muhlbauer launched his candidacy on May 24 by leaning into his rural roots.

One day before Iowa lawmakers adjourned for the year, the Iowa Senate amended a spending bill to allocate $4.5 million over two years to the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management for a sole source contract.

The funding to install a mobile panic button system in Iowa’s K-12 schools could only have been used by Rave Mobile Safety, which recently signed a contract with the Homeland Security department to replace Iowa’s emergency mass notification system.

The Iowa House altered the bill to leave the funding in place without an earmark for a specific product. But the last-minute effort raises questions about whether outgoing Homeland Security Director Paul Trombino III sought the funding to benefit a company represented by one of Iowa’s most influential lobbyists.

The Iowa House and Senate adjourned late in the evening on May 19 after finishing most of their work for this year. (Lawmakers will almost certainly come back for a special session to consider new maps of Iowa’s legislative and Congressional districts.)

In the coming days, Bleeding Heartland will closely examine several bills that passed in the late session rush. For now, I want to review the legislation that by some minor miracle didn’t make it to Governor Kim Reynolds’ desk, in spite of support from powerful interests.

All of these bills are likely to return in some form during the 2022 session, so don’t celebrate too soon. House Republicans were unable to pass a “water quality” bill backed by agricultural groups in 2017. But the Iowa Farm Bureau and its allies spent the interim chipping away at the GOP holdouts. The bill sailed through the House early in the 2018 session. The same scenario could play out with any of the proposals discussed below.

Paul Trombino III is resigning as director of Iowa’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Department, effective June 3, the governor’s office announced on May 20. A news release said Trombino was “leaving his position to pursue other opportunities.”

U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson (IA-01) supported legislation early this year to create an independent commission to investigate the attack on the U.S. Capitol, but voted against a similar bill this week.

Arthur Delaney reported for the Huffington Post on the “big flip-flop” by sixteen House Republicans. Congressional records show Hinson was an original co-sponsor of the bill GOP Representative Rodney Davis introduced on January 12. Delaney explained,

Governor Kim Reynolds has 30 days to consider any bills sent to her during the final days of a legislative session, but she could hardly wait 30 seconds to sign one of the bills approved hours before the Iowa House and Senate adjourned for the year.

The governor’s office announced at 12:36 am that Reynolds had signed House File 847, an education bill amended on May 19 to prohibit school districts and local governments from following best practices for slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Moments earlier, Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley had brought the bill to the governor’s desk.

The three Republicans now representing Iowa in the U.S. House rarely land on opposite sides in a floor vote. But Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02) parted ways with most of her GOP colleagues in March by voting to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

That wasn’t an isolated incident. Miller-Meeks joined Democrats in two more closely watched House votes on May 19, while Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-01) and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) stuck with the majority of the Republican caucus.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks is among three Republicans who will be fined $500 for violating the mask mandate on the House floor, Congressional correspondents reported on May 18. Seven more House Republicans received warnings for breaking the same rule. The mask refusers include some on the far-right wing of the GOP caucus: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Thomas Massie, Chip Roy, and Louie Gohmert.

Under House rules, $500 will be deducted from members’ salaries for a first violation of the mask requirement. A second offense will bring a $2,500 fine.

Miller-Meeks declared on May 14 that the House should set “an example for the rest of the country,” following updated guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control saying fully vaccinated people could safely forgo face coverings in most situations.

The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board is seeking further information on Heritage Action for America‘s efforts to lobby state government. The Associated Press was first to report on May 14 that the agency’s top staffer Mike Marshall asked Heritage Action’s executive director Jessica Anderson for details on her Iowa government contacts.

The previous day, leaked video showed Anderson bragging to Heritage donors that her group had “worked quietly” with Iowa lawmakers to help draft and support a new election bill, getting it passed with “little fanfare.”

While defending her approach to the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Governor Kim Reynolds repeatedly asserted that Iowa was seeing an “uptick” in suicides, and listed suicides among the mental health problems that were “exponentially increasing.”

Preliminary data on Iowa deaths by suicide in 2020 paint a more complex picture. An estimated 557 Iowans took their own lives last year, the highest number recorded in two decades. However, many of the increased deaths occurred during January and February, before COVID-19 was identified in Iowa and well before any restrictions were imposed to slow the spread of the novel virus.

Jim Leach is among 27 former Republican members of the U.S. House who spoke out this week for changing the GOP in the face of “rising political extremism.” Four former governors, along with several former ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, or Republican Party leaders are also among the 152 people who signed the “Call for American Renewal” published on May 13.

The document cites “the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice” when “forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise.” The signers “declare our intent to catalyze an American renewal, and to either reimagine a party dedicated to our founding ideals or else hasten the creation of such an alternative.”

Governor Kim Reynolds told Iowans this week to “lean further into normal,” since “There’s no reason for us to continue to fear COVID-19 any longer.”

Iowa Department of Public Health Director Kelly Garcia obliged with new guidance urging schools and child care providers to “approach COVID-19 like other child illnesses.”

To justify abandoning precautions like mandatory face coverings and quarantines for children exposed to coronavirus, Garcia misrepresented the latest advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

A leading Republican author of Iowa’s new election law has denied that Washington, DC-based Heritage Action for America helped write or pass any part of the bill.

In a leaked video obtained by Documented and published by Mother Jones on May 13, Heritage Action’s executive director Jessica Anderson claimed the group worked “quickly” and “quietly” on the bill Governor Kim Reynolds signed in March, which limits voting in many ways.

State Representative Bobby Kaufmann, who floor managed Senate File 413 in the Iowa House, told Bleeding Heartland in a May 13 telephone interview, “Any insinuation by Heritage that they had anything to do with this bill is a bald-faced lie.”

In the natural order of things, members of Congress brag about the federal assistance they fought to obtain for their constituents.

The Republicans who represent Iowa in the U.S. House and Senate turned that formula on its head this week. Every one cheered the news that tens of thousands of Iowans will soon lose the federal government support they depend on.

Governor Kim Reynolds showed yet again on May 11 that she will happily undermine vulnerable Iowans’ household budgets in order to please Republican allies and business lobby groups.

But her plan to turn down tens of millions of dollars a week in federal unemployment benefits rests on flawed premises.

The governor signed this bill on May 20. Original post follows.

“I look forward to signing this important legislation into law!” Governor Kim Reynolds tweeted on May 6, after the Iowa House and Senate approved a bill purportedly banning “vaccine passports.”

House File 889 fits a pattern of Republican bills that are best described as solutions in search of a problem. No state or local government agency intends to issue COVID-19 vaccine passports, nor are Iowa-based businesses rushing to require that customers show proof of coronavirus vaccinations.

A “message” bill can be useful politically, if it pleases a constituency Republicans need in the next election. The odd thing about this last-minute push is that Iowa’s most vocal vaccine skeptics don’t support the bill heading to the governor’s desk. On the contrary, they’re demanding a veto in the name of freedom.

A record number of Americans and Iowans passed away over the last year. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the largest share of the excess deaths and indirectly contributed to many fatalities from other causes (such as heart attacks or strokes).

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, Rachel Kidman, Rachel Margolis, and Emily Smith-Greenaway estimated that as of February 2021, approximately 37,300 children in the U.S. under age 18 “had lost at least 1 parent due to COVID-19, three-quarters of whom were adolescents.” Using figures for excess deaths during the pandemic (as opposed to confirmed coronavirus fatalities), the researchers estimated that 43,000 children in the U.S. have lost a parent to the virus. Their study used demographic modeling techniques as opposed to survey data.

The Iowa Department of Public Health’s spokesperson did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiry in early April about whether the agency has tracked how many Iowans who died of COVID-19 had children under age 18 or dependent adult children living in their home, and how many Iowans who died in the pandemic were primary caregivers to children (but not their parents).

Even without firm numbers, it’s clear that far more people than usual are experiencing their first Mother’s Day without their own mothers. This holiday can be one of the toughest milestones soon after a bereavement, and even many years later.

Although Senator Chuck Grassley is in no hurry to announce his future plans, former acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker continues to lay the groundwork for a possible U.S. Senate bid in 2022.

He speaks at GOP gatherings around Iowa, most recently the Johnson County Republican fundraiser on May 5. And perhaps more important for his future prospects, Whitaker helped create the America First Legal organization, which will regularly engage the Biden administration in fights sure to please the Republican base.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) voted unanimously on May 6 “to recommend that Congress ban political campaigns from guiding donors by default into recurring contributions through prechecked boxes,” Shane Goldmacher reported for the New York Times. It was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement for a commission that usually deadlocks on campaign finance regulations and enforcement.

President Donald Trump’s campaign popularized the technique in 2020, Goldmacher revealed in an investigation published last month. Pre-selecting the recurring contribution option led to record online fundraising, followed by a wave of complaints and huge demand for refunds from unwitting Trump donors.

Bleeding Heartland was first to report that the campaigns of Governor Kim Reynolds and and U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson (IA-01) are using the same practice.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has been on the road and on social media encouraging Iowans to get vaccinated for COVID-19, sometimes even administering the shots herself.

In a video released on May 4, Miller-Meeks highlighted her medical background and advocated for vaccines as a way of “getting our lives back to normal,” while acknowledging that getting a shot “is your decision to make.”

She was less tolerant of personal choices when approached the next day by a journalist seeking an interview.

Governor Kim Reynolds thrilled conservatives when she announced on Fox News last week that she wants to sign a bill banning transgender youth from competing on sports teams not matching their gender assigned at birth.

Defending the discriminatory policy during a news conference on May 5, Reynolds claimed five times that concerns about “fairness” are driving her commitment to address the issue.

This mean-spirited play to the GOP base has several dimensions. None of them are grounded in fairness.

The tenth year of Bleeding Heartland’s wildflower series kicks off with a plant that’s a common sight in Iowa woodlands, especially in April. Cutleaf toothwort (Dentaria laciniata), also known as toothwort, is native to every state east of the Rocky Mountains.

According to the Illinois Wildflowers website, favored habitats “include deciduous mesic woodlands, floodplain woodlands, wooded bluffs, and upland savannas. The presence of this species in a woodlands indicates that its soil has never been plowed under or subjected to heavy construction activities.”

The site says cutleaf toothwort “can survive some disturbance caused by occasional grazing and less disruptive activities of human society,” but tends to decline when the invasive garlic mustard becomes prevalent. (Now’s a good time to pull up garlic mustard, if the soil is soft and moist. It’s been so dry in central Iowa lately that I’ve found many of the roots break off.)

Most of the photos enclosed below were taken near my Windsor Heights home. Mary Riesberg also shared pictures she took in Hancock County, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from Lee County.

State officials deployed “strike teams” involving the Iowa National Guard to more businesses last year than previously acknowledged.

Records the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) released on April 26 show seventeen workplaces received COVID-19 testing assistance through a strike team. The agency had stated in January that only ten workplaces (operated by nine companies) had strike team visits. Several newly-disclosed events benefited businesses linked to Governor Kim Reynolds’ major campaign donors.

Iowa used the strike teams mostly during the spring of 2020, when COVID-19 testing supplies were scarce. However, a strike team was sent to Iowa Select Farms administrative headquarters in mid-July, more than five weeks after the state had stopped providing testing help to other business. That company’s owners are Reynolds’ largest campaign contributors.

The governor asserted at a January news conference that the state had facilitated coronavirus testing for more than 60 companies, saying no firm was denied assistance. The newly-released records show nineteen businesses received testing kits from the state, and another nineteen were directed to a nearby Test Iowa site where their employees could schedule appointments.

The public health department’s spokesperson Sarah Ekstrand has not explained why she provided incomplete information about the strike team program in January. Nor has she clarified what criteria state officials used to determine which companies received which kind of testing assistance.

The governor’s spokesperson Pat Garrett did not respond to any of Bleeding Heartland’s emails on this subject. Reynolds walked away when I tried to ask her about the strike team decisions at a media gaggle on April 28.

Mercifully, history did not repeat itself on April 30, when the Iowa Board of Regents selected Barbara Wilson to be the next University of Iowa president. Wilson is supremely qualified for the job, having served for the last six years as the second-ranking administrator at the University of Illinois system, and in several leadership roles at the Urbana-Champaign campus. A news release enclosed in full below describes her relevant experience.

All four finalists considered this year were far more qualified than outgoing president Bruce Harreld was when the Regents picked him in 2015, following a search marred by favoritism and secret meetings that appeared to violate Iowa’s open meetings law.

Whereas the Faculty Senate voted no confidence in the Board of Regents after Harreld was hired, and the Daily Iowan newspaper ran the front-page headline “REGENTS’ DECISION CONDEMNED,” reaction to Wilson’s hiring was overwhelmingly positive from students and faculty. The Daily Iowan’s editorial board had endorsed either Wilson or Georgia State University Provost Wendy Hensel as the best choices to take the university forward.

I was pleasantly surprised the Regents tapped Wilson, even though she fired a football coach and an athletics director at Illinois over scandals including alleged mistreatment of student-athletes. During Harreld’s tenure, Iowa’s Athletics Director Gary Barta continued to receive raises and a contract extension even after costing the university millions of dollars in lawsuits over discrimination and a hostile work environment.

The University of Iowa must comply with a subpoena from State Auditor Rob Sand seeking details on a 50-year deal to lease the university’s utility system to a public-private partnership, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously determined on April 30.

The Iowa Board of Regents approved the arrangement in December 2019 and closed on the deal in March 2020. But the university withheld many details, including the identity of “Iowa-based investors” who supposedly put up about 21.5 percent of the $1.165 billion lump-sum payment to operate the system for the next five decades.

The State Auditor’s office has been trying to enforce Sand’s subpoena since January 2020. The university and Board of Regents insisted they did not have to provide “confidential” information and disputed the validity of the subpoena.

None of the Supreme Court justices found the university’s stance convincing.

First-term U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson has picked up a controversial fundraising technique used by President Donald Trump’s campaign and more recently by Governor Kim Reynolds.

Some donors contributing to Hinson online are taken to a page that has recurring donation options pre-selected.

Governor Kim Reynolds revealed on April 29 that she is sending back $95 million in federal funds designated for testing students for COVID-19.

During a Fox News event featuring Republican governors, Reynolds said of President Joe Biden,

I think he thinks the COVID just started. I just returned 95 million dollars because they sent an additional 95 million dollars to the state of Iowa to get our kids back in the classroom by doing surveillance testing. And I said, “We’ve been in the classroom since August. Here’s your 95 million dollars back.”

Officials in the Iowa Department of Public Safety and the governor’s office decided during the summer of 2020 to install a permanent fence around the Terrace Hill mansion in Des Moines, records obtained by Bleeding Heartland show.

The documents don’t reveal, nor did state officials clarify, whether Governor Kim Reynolds or her staff pushed for added security around the governor’s official residence. The records also don’t explain the timing of the decision to move forward with a plan that had been floated years earlier, according to the agency responsible for protecting the governor.

The state of Iowa’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the 2020 fiscal year may be finalized by the end of June, six months later than the usual publication date.

Staff at the Iowa Department of Administrative Services compile the report using data provided by state government entities, and for many years have completed that work by December 31. However, Iowa State University (ISU) struggled to provide accurate, auditable data for the fiscal year that ran from July 2019 through June 2020. The reporting problems coincided with the year the university switched to the Workday computer system for accounting.

While other state government units sent their year-end financials by the usual deadline of October 1, 2020, ISU completed that process more than six months later, in early April.

Nearly six weeks have passed since Republican lawmakers approved a bill prohibiting local governments from banning “source of income” discrimination. Yet Senate File 252 still has not been sent to Governor Kim Reynolds, according to the legislature’s website.

While Iowa’s legislature is in session, the governor has three days to sign or veto any bill that reaches her desk, or it will become law without her signature. The governor’s staff often asks for an extra week or two to review a measure’s contents. But there is no recent precedent for the legislature to sit on a bill for this long.

The governor must eventually act on every bill the legislature passes. The unusual delay has fueled speculation that Reynolds may cast a rare veto of a bill approved by the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

Communications staff for the governor and legislative leaders did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries about why Senate File 252 has been held up. But signs point to the bill jeopardizing some federal housing funds.

Iowa’s Legislative Services Agency (LSA) may be able to use population data from the 2020 census as early as sometime in August, the agency’s senior legal counsel Ed Cook revealed today. The news increases the chance that a nonpartisan map could be prepared in time for state lawmakers to meet a constitutional deadline for approving new maps of legislative districts.

Two years ago this week, on the day before the Iowa legislature completed its work for 2019, Republicans added two new discriminatory provisions to the state’s health and human services budget. Both code sections quickly spawned litigation. Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against language designed to exclude the organization from sex education grants is now pending before the Iowa Supreme Court, after a District Court found the prohibition violated the state constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

A case challenging language that authorized discrimination against transgender Iowans on Medicaid never got that far. But on April 22, the ACLU of Iowa and the national ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project filed a new lawsuit in Polk County District Court.

Most of the new crimes and enhanced penalties that would be established under a policing bill approved by the Iowa House would have a disparate impact on Black people, according to analysis from the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.

Before passing Senate File 342, Iowa House members amended what had been a narrowly-focused bill on officer discipline to include several other so-called “Back the Blue” proposals: giving law enforcement more protection against lawsuits, increasing benefits for officers, and greatly increasing the criminal penalties for some protest-related actions.

For seven of the nine crimes addressed in the “Back the Blue” bill, now pending in the Iowa Senate, the LSA found the “conviction rate for African Americans exceeds the population proportion of the State, which would lead to a racial impact if trends remain constant.”

The Iowa Secretary of State’s office moved thousands of Iowans who did not vote in the 2020 general election to “inactive” status this month. But according to Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, a recent “No Activity” mailing from the state went to at least three groups of voters who should not have received it. Consequently, state officials “incorrectly inactivated” hundreds of voters in Linn County alone.

Staff in the Secretary of State’s office did not reply to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries on April 23, nor did they respond to a “Notice of Technical Infraction and Letter of Instruction“ Miller sent to Secretary of State Paul Pate the previous day.

U.S. Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-01) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02) were among dozens of House Republicans whose campaigns received $5,800 in March from Stephen Wynn, a former Republican National Committee finance chair who resigned in 2018 after former employees alleged sexual harassment or assault.

$5,800 is the maximum amount individuals can donate to federal campaigns for the 2022 election cycle ($2,900 each for the primary and general elections).

Eleven weeks after beginning to inspect workplace safety at the Iowa capitol, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) informed legislative leaders about conditions “that may expose workers to COVID-19 hazards.” OSHA recommended “immediate corrective actions where needed,” as well as a review of safety and health practices “to ensure consistency” with advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control guidelines

What took them so long?

A longstanding effort by Iowa Senate Republicans to reduce the number of Iowans receiving various forms of public assistance got a quiet boost last week from Governor Kim Reynolds.

For the first time, the governor’s draft human services budget included provisions that would create asset tests for federal food assistance and require the Iowa Department of Human Services to establish a new “eligibility verification system” for Medicaid and several other public assistance programs.

State Senator Jason Schultz has pushed similar legislation for several years running. Each session, Senate Republicans have approved the bills, which died in the House Human Resources Committee (see here and here).

Passing a budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 is the most important unfinished business for the Iowa legislature’s regular 2021 session. But House and Senate Republican leaders haven’t found consensus on spending targets for several large pieces of the roughly $8 billion state budget.

In a move without precedent in decades, Senate Republicans declined this this year to participate in the joint appropriations subcommittees where lawmakers review and discuss agency spending requests. Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver and Appropriations Committee chair Tim Kraayenbrink did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries about who made the decision or why.

After keeping a relatively low profile during his first few years in the Iowa legislature, State Senator Jim Carlin has been “loud and proud” this year on matters that might appeal to conservative Republicans.

Speaking on the Iowa Senate floor, Carlin has repeatedly alleged that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. He introduced a “bathroom bill” that became the first legislation targeting trans youth to make it through an Iowa House or Senate subcommittee. He led an effort to ban employers from requiring COVID-19 vaccines, and turned a subcommittee hearing on that bill into a platform for airing anti-vaccination views. He introduced a bill that would have required state university employees to be surveyed about their political views.

Carlin announced in February that he would seek the 2022 Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, whether or not Senator Chuck Grassley runs for re-election. In a campaign video, he declared, “Donald Trump made the Republican Party the party of working men and women,” and outlined “core beliefs” that hit everything on the usual conservative checklist. “I know the people of Iowa very well,” Carlin told Jacob Hall of The Iowa Standard in February. “I’ve literally represented the forgotten man for the last 30 years.”

Nevertheless, the people of Iowa have little apparent interest in his Senate bid.

Former State Representative Mary Ann Hanusa announced on April 15 that she will seek the Republican nomination in Iowa’s third Congressional district next year. She has also filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

The odd part is, no one knows whether Hanusa’s home county will still be part of IA-03 when Iowa adopts a new political map.

State Representative Ray Sorensen included two negative memes about COVID-19 vaccines in his latest weekly newsletter on Iowa legislative happenings.

Since early March, the Republican has regularly shared memes purporting to be humorous near the end of his online updates about bills the House has approved or is considering. The edition Sorensen sent out late last week, covering week 13 of the legislative session, included the following two images, interspersed with memes mocking public assistance programs, feminists, environmentalists, President Joe Biden, and leftist intellectuals.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ campaign is using pre-checked boxes for online fundraising to drive supporters toward recurring monthly contributions as well as additional one-time gifts.

The donation pages, associated with Facebook and Twitter posts bashing President Joe Biden’s policies, recall “aggressive” tactics President Donald Trump’s campaign used last year. As Shane Goldmacher reported for the New York Times earlier this month, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee used pre-checked boxes to generate record-setting online fundraising in the summer and fall of 2020, followed by an unprecedented number of refunds to donors who felt duped.

Reynolds campaign representatives did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries about the practice.

Devastating results for Democrats up and down the ballot last November brought Iowa’s swing-state status into question.

Nevertheless, the largest political action committee focused on electing pro-choice Democratic women has named Iowa’s 2022 races for governor and U.S. Senate among its national targets.

Governor Kim Reynolds made headlines on April 8 by telling a conservative talk radio host Iowa had turned down a request to shelter some unaccompanied migrant children in federal custody. “This is not our problem. This is the president’s problem,” Reynolds explained.

“No one will ever confuse Reynolds with Gov. Robert Ray,” observed political cartoonist Brian Duffy. “This is surely the low point of the administration of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds,” noted longtime commentator Chuck Offenburger. Many other Iowans were disappointed or even “ashamed” by the governor’s lack of compassion.

But never let it be said that Reynolds lacks any charitable impulses. Thanks to her willingness to donate her time and the use of a state-owned building, the private Des Moines Christian School raised $30,100 at its True-Blue Gala auction last night.

After declining for months to clarify how it might approach redistricting later this year, the Iowa Supreme Court issued an unsigned statement on April 8 “concerning its tentative plans.” Although the justices didn’t lay out a specific course of action, they hinted at principles that will govern their decisions on Iowa’s next set of political maps.

Governor Kim Reynolds has approved bonuses for at least five current state agency directors, allowing them to receive substantially more compensation than the top of the pay scale Iowa law sets for their positions.

The Iowa Department of Administrative Services disclosed information about four agency leaders now receiving such bonuses in response to Bleeding Heartland’s public records request. The Cedar Rapids Gazette’s Erin Jordan was first to report on Homeland Security and Emergency Management Director Paul Trombino’s bonus, in an article published April 7.

This post discusses each official’s bonus pay in the order that they were awarded. The governor’s spokesperson Pat Garrett did not respond to an April 7 email seeking to clarify whether any other heads of state departments are receiving greater compensation than the statutory maximum for their positions.

Governor Kim Reynolds is one step closer to getting the massive broadband expansion she asked Iowa lawmakers to fund.

Whether Iowans in underserved communities will be able to afford new high-speed internet is an open question, however.

Iowa’s official COVID-19 website added 68 more deaths over the weekend, bringing the state’s death toll to 5,822 (roughly one out of every 540 Iowans who was alive before the pandemic). The large increase was surprising; COVID-19 hospitalizations have been trending upward in recent weeks, but haven’t risen sharply enough to produce dozens of fatalities in just a few days.

It turns out that most of the newly reported deaths occurred more than three months ago.

As Iowa prepares to expand COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to all adults on April 5, racial and ethnic disparities in the state’s vaccination rates have narrowed slightly since Bleeding Heartland last reviewed this data four weeks ago. However, people of color have still received far fewer vaccine doses per capita, compared to white Iowans.

At least 1,588,117 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered to Iowa residents, according to the state’s vaccination dashboard on April 4. At least 662,885 Iowans have received all required doses of a COVID-19 vaccine (that is, two shots of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine). Another 368,646 Iowans “have received one dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine series, but have not completed the series.”

Breaking down the numbers by race and ethnicity, it’s apparent that Iowa has a long way to go to achieve equity in vaccine distribution.

Two Iowa students are among the plaintiffs in a groundbreaking federal class action lawsuit filed this past week. The Portland-based Religious Exemption Accountability Project is suing the U.S. Department of Education and its acting assistant secretary for civil rights, seeking “to put an end to the U.S. Department of Education’s complicity in the abuses and unsafe conditions thousands of LGBTQ+ students endure at hundreds of taxpayer-funded, religious colleges and universities.”

Lauren Hoekstra and Avery Bonestroo are undergraduates at Dordt University in Sioux Center, one of 25 Christian institutions where the 33 plaintiffs are now enrolled or formerly studied.

It was certainly a good Friday for Iowans who want to buy handguns but can’t pass a background check.

Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 756, making permits optional for buying handguns or carrying concealed weapons in Iowa, and House File 621, shielding firearms manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits related to gun violence.

Although Reynolds had postured as undecided on the permitless carry bill, telling reporters her staff would review the legislation carefully, I didn’t talk to any political insider in either party who had any doubt she would sign it. The only question was when. The answer turned out to be, right before the Easter holiday weekend, when fewer people would notice.

Republican lawmakers helped the governor out, waiting nearly two weeks to send her the gun bills, so she wouldn’t have to sign them while mass shootings in Georgia and Colorado were still dominating the national news. (While the Iowa legislature is in session, the governor must decide within three days whether to sign or veto bills on her desk.)

Making it easier for Iowans to buy guns with no screening or training might seem like a risky political move, given the overwhelming popular support for mandatory background checks and Reynolds’ past claims to support permits. The governor is clearly betting that pleasing the gun lobby–just about the only supporters of this legislation–will pay off in the next election.

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: The Governmental Accounting Standards Board and the Government Finance Officers Association now discourage use of the common acronym for this report, because when pronounced it sounds like a racial slur. Bleeding Heartland will avoid using the acronym in the future. Original post follows.

Challenges in obtaining auditable financial data from Iowa State University continue to delay the publication of the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) covering the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2020. The Iowa Department of Administrative Services compiles the CAFR and typically publishes it by December 31. The latest edition has been held up because ISU was unable to submit its year-end financial data on the usual timetable.

The university switched to using the Workday computer system for accounting at the start of the 2020 fiscal year. While Iowa’s public universities have long sent year-end data to the Department of Administrative by October 1, ISU is still working on some “supplemental pieces” six months later.

Governor Kim Reynolds signed Iowa on to a lawsuit challenging part of the federal government’s most recent COVID-19 relief package. Thirteen states filed suit in Alabama on March 31, charging that the American Rescue Plan “impermissibly seizes tax authority from the States.” Reynolds announced the lawsuit during a March 31 appearance on WHO Radio’s program hosted by Simon Conway. The Associated Press was first to report the news.

For the second straight election cycle, Iowa Republicans have gotten away with not counting disputed ballots in a race the GOP candidate won by fewer than ten votes.

Democrat Rita Hart announced on March 31 that she was withdrawing her contest of the election in Iowa’s second Congressional district, where Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks was certified the winner by six votes out of more than 394,000 cast.

On this Transgender Day of Visibility, I want to take a moment to reflect on one part of Selzer & Co’s latest Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom. The survey asked 775 Iowa adults whether they supported various Republican proposals, including this one: “Require public school students to use the restroom of the gender assigned at birth even if the student does not identify as that gender now.”

Nick Coltrain summarized the findings: 47 percent of respondents said they favor restricting school bathroom use, 42 percent opposed, and 11 percent were not sure.

Several initiatives Republican legislators have promoted this year lack popular support, according to the latest Iowa Poll by Selzer & Co for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom. One of the most unpopular proposals tested was a state constitutional amendment that would clear a path for future abortion bans.

Any day now, Governor Kim Reynolds is expected to sign the latest pro-gun bill to reach her desk. The most controversial provisions in House File 756 eliminate permit requirements for Iowans who want to purchase or carry pistols or revolvers. Since a background check is part of the current process for obtaining a permit to carry concealed weapons, gun safety advocates have warned the bill would make it easy for Iowans who can’t pass a background check to buy handguns.

However, Republican lawmakers have been telling constituents a different story. In their version of reality, the bill would increase background checks conducted in Iowa.

Where did they get this idea?

Governor Kim Reynolds will soon decide whether to sign a bill eliminating mandatory permits to carry concealed weapons in Iowa, and allowing firearms on school grounds. The legislation has been a priority for some pro-gun groups for more than a decade. But for years, bills to scrap concealed carry permits had few co-sponsors and never advanced beyond a committee in the Iowa House or Senate.

Jeff Kaufmann, who has chaired the Republican Party of Iowa since 2014, expressed concerns about the idea as the third-ranking Iowa House Republican in March 2011.

The Iowa House has again moved toward amending the state constitution to remove a lifetime ban on voting for most Iowans with felony convictions. In a gesture toward Iowa Senate Republicans, a separate bill the House approved would require payment of restitution to victims before someone’s voting rights could be restored.