Lawmakers say they’ll build a public safety building

A key republican says lawmakers will spend about eight million dollars to start planning for a new public safety building that would include a new lab for the state medical examiner. County Medical Examiners are threatening to resign in support of the new state medical examiner, who also has threatened to resign if she doesn’t get a new lab. House Speaker Brent Siegrist, a republican from Council Bluffs, says legislators didn’t promise to build a new forensics lab, the Governor did. Siegrist says they are looking to build a new building in a couple of years, but he said legislators never made any commitments. Siegrist denies lawmakers’ about-face on the issue is connected to the medical examiner’s threat to resign. Medical Examiner Julia Goodin has threatened to resign because the state’s facilities for conducting autopsies are sub-standard. Other medical examiners say Iowa’s facilities are “a joke” when compared to other states.