Iowa's Radio News Network
Officials are dragging a northeast Iowa river this (Monday) morning, looking for a fisherman who reportedly drowned overnight. The search is taking place on the Cedar River in Nashua. Rescue crews are looking for a man who reportedly wadded into the water around midnight to go fishing.
The victim apparently lost his footing and was swept under by the current. Rescue operations are underway below the Nashua Dam for the unidentified man.
Iowans whose summer vacation plans include taking a peek into a famous house in West Branch will have to settle for a view from the yard. You’ll be disappointed if you’d hoped to get inside the Herbert Hoover birthplace.
The tiny frame house where the only U.S. president from Iowa was born in 1874 is closing for renovation work and painting, a process that could take as long as four months. In the meantime, an exhibit on the house is opening at the nearby Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.
It’ll include a couple of artifacts, including the family cradle. Museum officials say part of the reason the work will take so long is the cottage is considered a health hazard. It’s coated in lead-based paint — a problem that’s being rectified.
A state audit shows the stepson of the mayor of a small central Iowa town “improperly” took about 45-thousand dollars of city funds. It happened in the city of Reasoner, which is in Jasper County. Kevin Beck, the son of the City Clerk and the stepson of the town’s mayor, was hired a year ago to be the clerk who handled the checks that Reasoner residents wrote for sewer services. He was to be paid one-hundred dollars a month.
The audit found that Beck wrote himself 52 checks — totaling more than 32-thousand dollars from last June to December and withdrew nearly 13-thousand dollars in cash from the city’s sewer account. He also wrote checks to a Grinnell hotel, to Wal-Mart to buy headlights and to Hy-Vee. The audit also found Beck had used city money to obtain a prepaid credit card last September, but he didn’t use it. In mid-December, Beck’s mother told the city council her son had taken 25-thousand dollars and was prepared to pay it back if the council didn’t press charges.
The council contacted the county attorney, and the sheriff searched the homes of Beck and his mother and stepfather, the town’s mayor, where a note Beck had written was found. Beck wrote that he was sorry he took the money, but that he did it alone and his mother and stepfather weren’t involved.
A weekend housefire in Hampton sent a man to the hospital and sent his son to jail. Around 6:30 Saturday night, Hampton fire crews were called to the house fire. 49-year-old Jonathon Johnson was airlifted to the Iowa City burn unit with severe burns to his face and hands.
His son, 18-year-old Jesse James Johnson, faces a variety of drug charges, including marijuana possession and drug paraphernalia. He was taken to the Hardin County Jail and posted bond Sunday night. Damage in the fire was contained to the kitchen, where police say it appears a cooking meth lab sparked the blaze. More charges are pending.
The Internal Revenue Service has reportedly placed a lien on the home of a Black Hawk County supervisor and vice chair of the Iowa Republican Party. Officials say Leon Mosley owes more than 46-thousand dollars to the federal government.
Mosley says the lien’s a mistake that’s a result of an issue with his charitable contributions to organize neighborhoods and to fight drug dealers around the state. Mosley says his attorney, W. Louis Beecher of Waterloo, is working to resolve the issue with the I-R-S. The lien was filed in late April in the Black Hawk County Courthouse, and include assessments for tax years 1995 through 1999 and for 2003.
The assessments for those years range from between nearly 17-hundred dollars to more than 12-thousand dollars. Mosley has said he created his Neighborhood Action Team, which is a non-profit entity, and has donated his county supervisor’s salary toward that. Mosley is running for re-election this fall. He was the top vote getter in the Republican primary election last fall.
The long-time leader of Republicans in the Iowa Senate is calling it quits.
Senator Stewart Iverson of Clarion lost an internal power struggle this spring and was replaced as Senate Co-Leader. “With the events and stuff going on, I said: ‘You know, after 17 years, maybe it’s time to move on with my life,’” Iverson says.
Iverson was Senate Majority Leader for eight years and Co-Leader for the past two years and he leaves as the longest-serving Majority Leader in the state senate’s history. Iverson retired from farming a couple of years ago, and moved from rural Dows into Clarion. He’s not revealing his next career move. “I’m working on some other stuff. I’m about 99.9 percent certain,” Iverson says. “I’ll know for sure by the end of the week.”
Iverson describes himself as a conservative, an entrepreneur and a capitalist. He lists the legislature’s move to eliminate state inheritance taxes on farmland that’s passed along to a son, daughter or grandchild as his proudest achievement. Iverson says he never thought of himself as a “partisan” politician. “Generally what I’ve seen over a period of time when people have been in office they tend to, my term is ‘governmentize’ and I never really never got into that. You know, I’m still a firm believer in we have to do what’s right for the public good and sometimes that means making decisions that (are) not always popular with certain groups of people who, you know, get money out of government,” Iverson says. “I think my job was to protect the taxpayer.”
Iverson has nearly $130,000 in his campaign account, and he plans to distribute it to Republican candidates seeking election this fall. “I’m still going to help Republican candidates and do what I can to help Republicans get elected this fall,” Iverson says. “I think that our vision for the future is much better than our opponents.”
Iverson was first elected to the Iowa House in 1989 before winning election to the state Senate. There will be a special convention with delegates from the counties Iverson has represented to pick a successor whose name will be on the fall ballot. He says several candidates are considering the post, including James Kurtenbach of Nevada and George Eichhorn of Stanhope — two men who are currently members of the Iowa House.
In a prepared statement, Iverson urged all Iowans to consider public service of some kind. He closed with this line: “Iowa is too great of a state for small dreams.”
There may not be many season tickets for Iowa football games available when they go on sale to the general public later this month.
The process of re-seating Kinnick Stadium wrapped up last week and the next phase of season ticket sales begins on Tuesday. U-of-I ticket manager David Sandstrum says new members of the “I-Club” who haven’t had tickets before can now order tickets.
Sandstrum believes there will be some season tickets still available, but they won’t last long. Sandstrum says any single game tickets that might be available will not go on sale until sometime in July. He says there will probably be a limited amount of tickets available, mainly for non-conference games. Iowa opens the season at home September second against Montana.
O.KayHenderson.com