Governor Kim Reynolds used $448,449 in federal COVID-19 relief funds to cover a shortfall in her office budget without documenting that 21 of her staffers were “substantially dedicated” to the pandemic response, a state audit determined.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General asked state auditors in January 2021 to review whether the spending complied with rules governing the use of Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funds. Bleeding Heartland was first to report in September 2020 on CARES Act payments supporting the governor’s permanent staffers, and reported exclusively last December on how documents were altered to make a “FY 2020 Shortfall” in the governor’s office budget appear to be “COVID-19 Personnel Costs.”

State Auditor Rob Sand warned the Reynolds administration in October 2020 that without adequate documentation, COVID-19 relief funds used to pay governor’s staff salaries might need to be repaid to the federal government. The report issued this week advised the governor to return the money to Iowa’s Coronavirus Relief Fund “for other eligible and supported uses prior to the December 31, 2021 deadline.”

The governor’s spokesperson Alex Murphy told reporters the office is “now working with Treasury to provide them documentation” to support the CARES Act spending.

That’s easier said than done.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ office was able to spend nearly 40 percent more than its $2.3 million budget appropriation during the last fiscal year, mostly by shifting personnel costs onto other state agencies.

Documents Bleeding Heartland obtained through public records requests show that eight state agencies covered $812,420.83 in salaries and benefits for nine employees in the governor’s office from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021. In addition, the Office for State-Federal Relations in Washington, DC remained understaffed, as it has been throughout Reynolds’ tenure. The vacant position should allow roughly $85,000 in unspent funds to be used to balance the rest of the governor’s office budget, as happened last year.

The governor’s communications director Pat Garrett did not respond to four inquiries over the past two weeks related to the office budget. But records indicate that unlike in 2020, federal COVID-19 relief funds will not be tapped to cover salaries for Reynolds’ permanent staffers in fiscal year 2021.

In an unusual move, Governor Kim Reynolds is allowing two state agency directors she appointed early this year to continue serving through next year’s legislative session, even though they lacked the votes to be confirmed by the Iowa Senate.

Reynolds withdrew the nominations of Department of Management Director Michael Bousselot and Department of Administrative Services Director Adam Steen shortly before state lawmakers adjourned for the year in May. Days later, she rejected the directors’ resignations, saying she would resubmit their names to the Senate in 2022, documents obtained through public records requests show.

The governor’s office has not publicly announced Reynolds’ decision to hold over Bousselot and Steen and did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries.

The Department of Management handles state budget planning as well as disbursements from Iowa’s general fund and various other funds. The Department of Administrative Services handles human resources, payroll, and procurement of goods and services for state government.

Governor Kim Reynolds approved plans last year to spend federal COVID-19 relief funds to upgrade the technology in her conference room, state records show.

The Office of Chief Information Officer (OCIO) paid vendor AVI Systems $67,543.48 in December for unspecified “IT Equipment and Software” and “IT Outside Services.” Published reports and searchable databases do not reveal that those purchases benefited the governor’s office. But documents Bleeding Heartland obtained through public records requests indicate that the spending covered new audio and video equipment installed in the Robert Ray Conference Room, which is part of the governor’s office suite.

Records also show the payments were supposed to come out of Iowa’s Coronavirus Relief Fund, a pot of federal money established under the March 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

OCIO may have tapped a different funding source later to cover the conference room upgrade, as happened with a $39,512 project to migrate the governor’s office computers from Google suite to Microsoft Office 365 last year. Entries on the state’s online checkbook, totaling $67,543.48 to AVI Systems on the same December dates, do not mention the Coronavirus Relief Fund.

The governor’s spokesperson Pat Garrett ignored six inquiries over a two-week period. OCIO’s public information officer Gloria Van Rees also did not respond to eight messages during the same time frame seeking to clarify what funding stream paid for the conference room upgrades, and whether the governor’s office reimbursed OCIO for the payments to AVI Systems, as happened following the Office 365 migration.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

UPDATE: Weeks after publication, state officials said this payment had been “inaccurately coded to the federal CARES program,” which was “anticipated” to cover this expense but did not. They said the database would be corrected to reflect the coding error. More details are at the end of this post. Original text follows.

Iowa’s Office of Chief Information Officer spent $39,512 in federal COVID-19 relief funds on a project to migrate computers in Governor Kim Reynolds’ office from Google suite to Microsoft Office 365.

Public databases showing expenditures from Iowa’s Coronavirus Relief Fund do not indicate the governor’s office was the beneficiary of that November payment from OCIO to the vendor Insight Public Sector for unspecified “IT Outside Services.” Documents obtained through public records requests show the money covered the cost of the Google to Office 365 migration.

The governor’s office reimbursed OCIO for that expense in mid-December, days after the Reynolds administration was forced to backpedal on other COVID-19 funds spent on computer technology. Earlier the same month, Bleeding Heartland had sought records related to goods and services OCIO purchased on behalf of the governor’s office using money from the Coronavirus Relief Fund. 

The governor’s spokesperson Pat Garrett has not replied to inquiries about who authorized the initial spending on switching from Google to Office 365 or what funding source eventually covered the cost.

Governor Kim Reynolds and other officials with important roles in Iowa’s COVID-19 response received talking points from Domo, Inc. before filming a promotional video for the company on state property last July.

The Utah-based firm, part of a group that received a $26 million no-bid contract to create the Test Iowa program, provided each interview subject with questions and “key statements” in advance, documents Bleeding Heartland received through a public records request show. State Medical Director Dr. Caitlin Pedati, the governor’s chief operating officer Paul Trombino, and others voiced some of those messages on camera.

Despite official claims that “no state resources were used” for the video, email records indicate two of the governor’s staffers spent time on preparations such as securing permissions to use different areas of the state capitol building. In addition, Trombino asked Dr. Michael Pentella, director of the State Hygienic Laboratory, to participate in the Test Iowa video.

Governor Kim Reynolds announced on February 1 that she had selected Michael Bousselot to serve as director of the Iowa Department of Management, effective February 8. That agency handles state budget planning as well as disbursements from Iowa’s general fund and various other funds, such as the Coronavirus Relief Fund and other federal money flows related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The appointment means that loyalists who formerly worked in the governor’s office will head Iowa’s budget and homeland security departments, provided that state senators confirm Reynolds’ nominees.

Three state agencies that play important roles in Iowa’s use of COVID-19 relief funds will have new leadership in the coming weeks.

The turnover underscores the need for lawmakers, state and federal auditors, and the news media to keep a close watch on how Governor Kim Reynolds’ administration spends money Congress approved last year to address the coronavirus pandemic.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ office would have had a large shortfall for the fiscal year that ended June 30 without a transfer of federal funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, state financial reports show.

Documents Bleeding Heartland obtained through public records requests indicate that in mid-September, the state’s accounting system showed $448,448.86 was needed to balance the fiscal year 2020 appropriation for the governor’s office. Reynolds’ chief of staff Sara Craig Gongol invoiced the Iowa Department of Homeland Security for exactly that amount in CARES Act funds shortly before the books closed on fiscal year 2020.

That invoice and an accompanying document on “COVID-19 Personnel Costs” were revised to incorporate language from U.S. Treasury guidance on allowable Coronavirus Relief Fund expenditures.

For many years, during several administrations, Iowa governors have maintained a larger office than the general fund appropriation would otherwise allow by having separate state agencies support some employees’ salaries. But it has not been typical to use hundreds of thousands of federal dollars to balance the books. Without the CARES Act funding, Reynolds’ office would have been deeply in the red during the last fiscal year, even after four state agencies chipped in a total of $357,652 to cover part of four staffers’ compensation.

Iowa Medical Director Dr. Caitlin Pedati received a 45 percent raise this summer despite a state policy limiting within-grade pay increases, records obtained by Bleeding Heartland show.

Department of Administrative Services (DAS) Interim Director Paul Trombino III advocated for Pedati to receive the unusually large raise three weeks after informing state agency directors that they could give employees within-grade salary hikes of up to 3 percent.

State rules also require that “any within grade pay increase must be accompanied by a current performance evaluation,” Trombino reminded directors in the same memo. However, staff with the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) and DAS did not answer questions about whether anyone has formally reviewed Pedati’s work this year.

Governor Kim Reynolds has defended her decision to use nearly $450,000 in federal funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to pay salaries and benefits for her permanent staffers.

But her comments at a September 16 news conference, along with information her staff provided to some reporters afterwards, left several salient questions unanswered.

Governor Kim Reynolds directed that nearly $450,000 in federal funding the state of Iowa received through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act be used to cover salaries and benefits for staff working in her office.

According to documents Bleeding Heartland obtained from the Iowa Department of Management through public records requests, the funds will cover more than 60 percent of the compensation for 21 employees from March 14 through June 30, 2020.

Reynolds has not disclosed that she allocated funds for that purpose, and reports produced by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency have not mentioned any CARES Act funding received by the governor’s office. Nor do any such disbursements appear on a database showing thousands of state government expenditures under the CARES Act.

The governor’s communications director Pat Garrett did not respond to four requests for comment over a two-week period.

The state of Iowa is advertising for a new Department of Transportation director, about a week after Governor Kim Reynolds requested the resignation of current Director Mark Lowe.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ office requested and received a $200,000 budget increase for the current fiscal year, telling key Republican lawmakers the funding would cover health and tax policy analysts. Both positions have now been filled.

Jerry Foxhoven has shed more light on the disagreement that preceded his forced departure as Iowa Department of Human Services director last month. On July 24 he told David Pitt of the Associated Press “that he declined to approve paying the salary of Elizabeth Matney, who left DHS on May 17 to accept a job as Gov. Kim Reynolds’ adviser on health policy.”

Staff for Reynolds disputed Foxhoven’s account, saying he never raised concerns about covering Matney’s salary and wasn’t fired for that reason. They also noted that for many years, state agencies including DHS have occasionally paid employees working in the governor’s office.

Foxhoven’s aware of that precedent, having signed some of the relevant documents himself. So why would he question the legality of this arrangement? The former director’s comments to reporters and records obtained by Bleeding Heartland provide some clues.

Governor Kim Reynolds announced last week that Jim Kurtenbach will be the new director of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services (DAS), effective July 1. Paul Trombino has held that position on an interim basis for about a month, after the Iowa Senate did not confirm previous DAS Director Janet Phipps.

Tapping Kurtenbach for this job was a strange choice. The agency has broad responsibility for human resources, procurement, and accounting on behalf of the state. Sexual harassment or discrimination by senior officials has led to several lawsuits against the state and millions of dollars in settlements in recent years. Yet not only does Kurtenbach lack relevant experience in the HR field, his hiring and managerial decisions as Iowa State University’s vice president and chief information officer were far from a model for best practices.

The Iowa Department of Transportation is standing behind its ruling that limited the use of traffic cameras in several large Iowa cities. The DOT adopted new rules in late 2013 to limit local governments’ ability to install traffic cameras on or near highways. Those rules required cities to demonstrate that cameras were needed to address “critical safety issues,” which could not be resolved by other means. Studies have produced conflicting data on whether cameras reduce red light or speeding infractions or vehicle accidents.

In March of this year, DOT officials ordered officials in six cities to shut off ten out of 34 traffic cameras cities had defended on safety grounds. The city of Davenport opted to comply with the DOT ruling, but five other cities asked department officials to reconsider the decision. (Although a reversal was unlikely, exhausting administrative appeals typically precedes legal action challenging a state agency’s decision.)

This week, DOT Director Paul Trombino notified city officials in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, and Muscatine that the department was rejecting their appeals, because data did not demonstrate that the disputed cameras had improved safety or reduced crashes. Click through to read copies of the letters. The fifth city to appeal, Sioux City, filed a lawsuit last year challenging the DOT rules. A Woodbury County District Court is scheduled to hear that case soon. Des Moines officials plan to challenge the DOT in court as well. Cedar Rapids officials have not yet decided whether to file a lawsuit. After the jump I’ve enclosed excerpts from Kathy Bolten’s report for the Des Moines Register and Rick Smith’s for the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Local governments are generally responsible for enforcing traffic laws. I’ll be interested to see whether Iowa courts back up the DOT’s efforts to restrict those powers on or near major highways. According to Trombino, the Iowa Code allows the DOT to enforce limits on cameras for traffic enforcement. Whatever the courts decide, the state’s multi-pronged assault on local control remains an under-reported story of Governor Terry Branstad’s fifth and sixth terms.

As Bleeding Heartland has discussed before, I’ve long felt that Governor Terry Branstad’s disregard for local government authority is one of the most under-reported Iowa political stories of the last few years. The Iowa Department of Transportation’s new rules restricting cities’ use of traffic cameras is one of many examples. Bills seeking to ban local governments from using traffic cameras for law enforcement stalled during the 2012 and 2013 legislative sessions. The Iowa DOT’s new rules went into effect last month; they do not prohibit all use of traffic cameras but require annual reviews to show the cameras are improving safety and not just serving as a revenue source for local government.

Sioux City is one of many Iowa municipalities that have installed traffic cameras on some major roads and intersections. The Iowa DOT gave Sioux City officials “until May 1 to justify the use of two speed cameras and seven of its 11 red-light cameras.” Now the city government has filed a lawsuit claiming the state department exceeded its authority.

Assistant City attorney, Justin Vondrak, filed the judicial review action in Woodbury County District Court and says the DOT regulations make it almost impossible for the city to use speed cameras along Interstate 29 within the city limits. “What we’re asking for is a review of the rules and to eventually have the rules determined to be unconstitutional based on the city’s home rule authority, as well as other Iowa code sections which grant the city joint jurisdiction with the DOT for traffic enforcement upon the primary roadways within the city’s jurisdiction,” according to Vondrak.

More details on the lawsuit are after the jump.

Whatever the District Court rules, I expect the losing side to appeal and would not be surprised to see the Iowa Supreme Court eventually decide this matter. The case raises interesting questions about local and state government powers. On a related note, I still think some municipality should have challenged Governor Branstad’s executive order on project labor agreements in court.

The Iowa Transportation Commission unanimously approved new rules yesterday regarding local use of cameras to enforce traffic laws on speeding and running red lights. You can read the rules proposed by the Iowa Department of Transportation here (pdf). A brief summary is after the jump.

Assuming the Iowa legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee allows the regulations to take effect, city or county governments will have to do more to gain approval from the Iowa DOT for installing or maintaining traffic cameras on roads. Iowa DOT Director Paul Trombino assured commissioners that the department will not ban traffic cameras, but officials will need to see evidence that cameras are being used for safety reasons and not primarily as a way to collect revenue. Dar Danielson and Mike Wiser both covered the transportation commission hearing.

The Iowa DOT pursued new rulemaking on this issue after bills that would have banned local governments from using traffic cameras for law enforcement stalled during the 2012 and 2013 legislative sessions.

Reasonable minds can differ on whether cameras are justified to enforce speeding laws. Regardless of your personal feelings, it’s striking as another example of Governor Terry Branstad’s administration and Republican lawmakers moving away from “local control” and embracing more state constraints on city and county government actions. Some local law enforcement agencies are not happy about the new rules on cameras.

Governor Terry Branstad indicated yesterday that the Iowa Department of Transportation will review its policy on driver’s licenses for immigrants with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status. He also suggested that if the Iowa legislature addresses this issue, he would sign a bill allowing approximately 5,000 undocumented immigrants with this status to receive Iowa driver’s licenses and non-operator IDs.

UPDATE: On the afternoon of January 23, the Iowa DOT announced it will issue driver’s licenses to immigrants with deferred status. The full official statement is at the end of this post.

Advocacy groups and some Iowa lawmakers are challenging the Iowa Department of Transportation’s policy against issuing driver’s licenses or other identification cards to those granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Iowa has a lot of strengths as a place to live, but good public transportation isn’t one of them. In most of our cities and towns, adults need to drive to get to work, school, or shops for necessities.

That’s going to be a lot more difficult for approximately 5,000 Iowa residents who were brought to this country as undocumented immigrants during childhood.  

The city of Windsor Heights will take the Iowa Department of Transportation to court over the denial of a request to place speed enforcement traffic cameras on Interstate 235.

In the final days of the 2011 Iowa legislative session, funding for passenger rail was one of the last disputes House Republican and Senate Democratic negotiators resolved. The final deal called for no passenger rail money in the state budget for fiscal year 2012, but left “intent” language describing future state funding to match federal grants for a train route between Iowa City and Chicago. At that time, news reports indicated that legislators would need to allocate $6.5 million toward passenger rail in fiscal year 2013 to keep this project alive, plus $10 million total in subsequent years.

Before the Iowa House and Senate adjourned last week, I saw no mention of passenger rail funding in any reports about the infrastructure budget for fiscal year 2013, which begins on July 1. Wondering whether no news was bad news, I started asking around. What I learned is after the jump, along with new links on the potential for passenger rail across Iowa.

Governor Terry Branstad will not ask state legislators to raise the gasoline tax in 2012, he confirmed yesterday. The comments will disappoint road-builders and members of a transportation commission the governor appointed earlier this year.

Iowa Department of Transportation officials have asked the Federal Railroad Administration to separate the $230 million federal grant intended to support passenger rail service from Chicago to Iowa City. Separating the funds would allow the Illinois Department of Transportation to move ahead with the Chicago to Moline (Quad Cities) portion of the rail line. Meanwhile, the Iowa DOT will study a potential passenger rail link all the way to Omaha, Nebraska.

The Iowa legislature barely kept hope alive for future funding to support a passenger rail link connecting Iowa City to Chicago, via the Quad Cities. However, most Iowa Transportation Commission members back the Amtrak project and would consider moving funds from other areas to make it happen.

Like other states, Iowa is digging a fiscal hole by not spending enough to repair roads, according to a report Smart Growth America and Taxpayers for Common Sense released this month. The non-profit Smart Growth America is “the only national organization dedicated to researching, advocating for and leading coalitions to bring smart growth practices to more communities nationwide.” Taxpayers for Common Sense is “a non-partisan budget watchdog” seeking “to achieve a government that spends taxpayer dollars responsibly and operates within its means.”

The “Repair Priorites” report notes that less than half of Iowa’s roads are in good condition, yet the state continues to spend disproportionately on new road construction rather than repair. Table 1 on pages 10 and 11 of this pdf file shows that Iowa has about 22,999 “state-owned lane-miles of major roads,” of which just 10,558 (46 percent) are in good condition. Iowa would need to spend about $552 million per year to repair and preserve state roads in good condition, but that figure exceeds the total Iowa Department of Transportation budget for capital investments. Between 2004 and 2008, Iowa was spending about $172 million per year on repair and preservation for state-maintained roads. That’s roughly 32 percent of the capital investment budget. Meanwhile, Iowa added 363 state-owned lane miles between 2004 and 2008, spending more than $190 million annually on road expansion (see table A4 on pages 29 and 30).

As time passes and roads deteriorate from “good” to “fair” or “poor” condition, repairs become far more expensive. Figure 3 on page 12 of the report shows that maintaining a road “in good condition over time costs less than half the cost of making major repairs after letting the same road deteriorate to poor condition.”

Excerpts from the “Repair Priorities” executive summary and Iowa fact sheet are after the jump.

Governor Terry Branstad has suggested that Iowa needs to increase the gas tax to pay for the long-term needs of the state’s road system. To protect taxpayers’ long-term interests, the governor and officials like Department of Transportation Director Paul Trombino should support investing more on road maintenance to reduce future costs.

Underscoring Iowa’s failure to maintain its vital infrastructure, a report Transportation for America released in March indicated that Iowa is the third-worst state for structurally deficient bridges. Earlier this year, Smart Growth America’s report on “smart transportation” policies for Iowa (pdf) recommended that state policy-makers: allocate more funds to maintain and repair roads and bridges; invest more in public transportation; assign some transportation money to grants that would reward “innovative least cost solutions”; and revisit the spending priorities in the Iowa Department of Transportation’s Long Range Transportation Plan.

Prospects for a passenger rail connection between Chicago and Iowa City do not look good as state budget negotiations continue between Governor Terry Branstad and legislative leaders. Last October, the federal government awarded $230 million toward a rail line from Chicago to Iowa City. The Chicago to Quad Cities portion of the project will go ahead, because the state of Illinois has approved matching funds. However, Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen says House Republicans are still dead-set against allocating state funds in fiscal year 2012 to match the federal grant. Iowa would need to appropriate $10 million, plus approximately $3 million in annual operating subsidies, although local officials in communities that would benefit from the rail link have offered to cover some of the operating funding.

Earlier this month, Representative Bruce Braley (IA-01) urged state legislators not to pass up the chance “to stimulate Iowa’s economy and create jobs by funding the high-speed passenger rail line.” Braley serves on the House Transportation Committee and has long advocated passenger rail between Chicago and Dubuque as well as to the Quad Cities and Iowa City. With Republicans in control of the U.S. House, the federal government is unlikely to make further large investments in passenger rail as part of a transportation bill or an economic stimulus package.

Central Iowa elected officials and business leaders also support the planned line to Iowa City, with the hope that rail would eventually be extended through Des Moines to Council Bluffs/Omaha. This week Democratic State Senator Matt McCoy, who represents part of Des Moines, urged Governor Terry Branstad to get involved and advocate for the passenger rail funds. McCoy argued that the project has economic benefits, is cost-effective and would reduce oil consumption. I’ve posted an excerpt from his editorial after the jump.

Branstad has been saying for months that he opposes state subsidies for rail. (Never mind that roads receive far larger subsidies than train travel.) I had hoped that Chamber of Commerce and Greater Des Moines Partnership types would be able to change Branstad’s mind on this issue. However, the governor told EasternIowaGovernment.com last week that he was “letting them sort that [rail funding] out between the House and Senate.”

Governor Terry Branstad finally announced his choice to head the Iowa Department of Transportation today. Paul Trombino III has been serving as Bureau Director of Transit, Local Roads, Rails, and Harbors for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Before this year he was Region Operations Director of the Wisconsin DOT. After the jump I’ve posted the press release announcing Trombino’s appointment, which includes some details on his education and work experience. Trombino’s appointment is subject to Iowa Senate confirmation, but he is well qualified for the job and should not run into any trouble.

I hope that in his new position, Trombino will be able to target state resources toward repairing Iowa’s many deficient bridges and roads, as opposed to spending the lion’s share on new road construction.

I also hope he will help the governor see the benefits of expanding passenger rail in Iowa. Representing the Wisconsin DOT at a high-speed rail conference last year, Trombino depicted passenger rail as part of a “robust, diverse transportation system that meets the public need,” not something to be pursued instead of repairing state highways. (Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker rejected federal high-speed rail funding shortly after taking office this year.) Passenger rail was a goal of former Governor Chet Culver’s administration, but Branstad has made clear that roads will be his top concern, funded with a higher gas tax if necessary. Branstad didn’t include any passenger rail money in his draft budget, although he hasn’t definitively rejected federal funds allocated last year to extend a rail link from Chicago to Iowa City. Rail advocates have been working on funding plans that would require certain local communities to cover part of future passenger rail subsidies.

Branstad announced most of his picks to lead state departments in November and December, but he delayed choosing a head for the Iowa DOT. Instead, he asked Nancy Richardson to stay on through the 2011 legislative session. Governor Tom Vilsack originally named Richardson to that position, and she was one of the few Vilsack department heads that Culver left in place.

Branstad’s administration is nearly complete, but he has a few other significant personnel decisions to make. Earlier this month the Iowa Senate rejected his choice to lead the Department of Human Rights and one of his appointees to the State Judicial Nominating Commission. Branstad also needs to fill one more vacancy on the state Environmental Protection Commission. He withdrew one of his nominees to that body after the Sierra Club’s Iowa chapter pointed out the governor’s choices would leave the commission with too many Republican members.

UPDATE: Branstad nominated Nancy Couser for the last open spot on the Environmental Protection Commission. She is a cattle feeder from rural Nevada who also serves on the Iowa Beef Industry Council.