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.”

Lorraine Meriner explains why Scott County Supervisor John Maxwell’s possible violation of Iowa’s open meeting law must be formally investigated. -promoted by Laura Belin

On the morning of May 25, the Scott County Board of Supervisors held a special meeting to appoint a new county auditor to succeed Roxanna Moritz, who stepped down last month. According to Iowa’s open meetings law, if a majority of a governmental body’s members meet, their meeting must be publicly announced at least 24 hours in advance and must be held in “open session,” accessible to the public. In addition, meeting minutes must be made publicly available.

The law allows for closed sessions in some extenuating circumstances. Although the five supervisors met in open session on Tuesday, board vice chair John Maxwell’s contradictory recent comments to local reporters suggest that the board’s three Republican members violated open meeting law just days prior.

John Tyson is a Mennonite pastor. He lives in Waukee. -promoted by Laura Belin

I am the pastor of a church in Des Moines that played a major role in Governor Robert Ray’s resettlement of Tai Dam refugees in Iowa in the 1970s. Although some Iowans voiced familiar concerns that new arrivals would take away jobs, Ray persisted regardless of political risk.

To justify his humanitarian welcome of refugee families, he put a stake in moral ground: “I didn’t think we could just sit here idly and say, ‘Let those people die’. We wouldn’t want the rest of the world to say that about us if we were in the same situation…Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”

This is moral language in defense of policy – and from the vantage point of 2021, it is jarring to see it coming from a Republican.

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.

Herb Strentz reviews current political divisions over examinations of systemic racism. -promoted by Laura Belin

Our nation’s long, tortured, and systemic racism was marked in late May by several commentaries and observances, which help explain why the adjectives “long,” “tortured,” and “systemic” are appropriate and, unfortunately, will likely remain so.

The June issue of National Geographic offered a centennial retrospective of June 1, 1921, when “a white mob massacred as many as 300 people in the prosperous Black district of Tulsa, Oklahoma.” The New York Times offered an interactive account of the massacre.

May 25 also marked the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Economist, a British weekly, offered a cover story, commentary, and Special Report on Race in America. A provocative point made by The Economist’s statistics and analysis is “America is becoming less racist but more divided by racism.”

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.

Randy Richardson reviews the education bills Iowa lawmakers passed during the 2021 session. -promoted by Laura Belin

According to the Republican Party of Iowa’s website, Republicans believe “individuals, not the government, make the best decisions; all people are entitled to equal rights; and decisions are best made close to home.”

While the party may espouse those beliefs, their actions on public education hardly exemplify those statements.

This post first appeared on Laura Crossett’s website The New Rambler. -promoted by Laura Belin

Dear Governor Reynolds:

It is my understanding that you have decided to discontinue additional federal unemployment payments to Iowans who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic because you want people to get back to work. As one of those Iowans, I’m writing to you because I would very much like to go back to work, but I’m having some difficulty figuring out how I might do so.

I have a child who suffers from significant mental illness. As I know both mental health services and child care are interests of yours, I thought perhaps you might have some advice.

Jim Chrisinger: Democracy is the reason the United States of America exists. How is it that so many people don’t find it to be worth defending? -promoted by Laura Belin

Those of us who are hair-on-fire upset about attacks on our democracy are having trouble understanding why others aren’t.  

No question, our democracy is under attack. See voter suppression, gerrymandering, and incoming governors robbed of authority by lame duck legislators. Donald Trump endlessly repeats his Big Lie about the 2020 election to undermine our free and fair elections. To my knowledge, no elected Iowa Republican has pushed back. Nearly 70 percent of Republicans nationally believe Joe Biden did not win legitimately.  

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.

Keegan Jones is a lifelong Iowan and 2013 graduate of Fort Dodge Senior High. He currently works as a financial analyst and consultant. -promoted by Laura Belin

I’ve been lucky to travel all over the U.S. and around the globe during my professional career. Every time I tell a stranger I’m from Iowa, I’m confronted with the same question: “Why would anyone want to live in Iowa?”

I often asked my parents the same question when I was growing up, but over time I grew to appreciate being an Iowan and love to brag about our state. Telling people about what it means to be “Iowa nice” and showing off pictures of a beautiful sunset over a cornfield makes it easy to show why Iowa can be great place to live. But convincing someone to move here? That’s another story.

In the hopes of attracting people to move here, I wanted to examine all the compelling reasons why Iowa is a great place to live.