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Be on the lookout for bats

October 31, 2009 By

It’s no Halloween prank — Iowans are being warned to be on the lookout for bats. Pam Weis, a Humane Society spokeswoman, says this is the season where the furry, flying mammals are searching for homes, and they may choose yours.

“This time of year, bats are looking for places that are warm and cozy for them to hold up for the winter so a lot of times people will begin to see more activity in their attics, places that are enclosed,” Weis says. “That’s what bats are looking for, a place to shield them from the weather in the wintertime.” Weis says if you notice a bat in your home, don’t panic, but they can carry rabies, so be careful.

Wies says, “If you go into a room and see a bat into the room and there is a small child or there is an adult that is incapacitated or a frail, elderly adult that may not be able to tell you whether or not they came in contact with the bat, then you need to keep the bat contained and call animal control to get it because they need to hold it for rabies testing.” Wies says if you see a bat in your home, don’t take chances.

“Try to get it somewhere you can shut the door, put a towel under the bottom of the door so it’s stuck in a spare room or whatever, call us and we’ll come and get it and test to make sure it doesn’t have rabies,” Weis says. “If it hasn’t come into contact with anybody and you know it hasn’t come into contact with anybody, then absolutely. If you can safely get it out of your house by shooing it out of your house or by putting on big, huge gardening gloves, you can do that.” Weis says several areas of the state have large bat populations.

“It happens more than not this time of year, in the fall and in the spring, we get so many bat calls when people open a closet and something flies out and you go, ‘Oh, my goodness! What is that?’ and it turns out to be a bat, yes, absolutely, animal control can help you with that.” The most common bat in Iowa is the little brown bat. Weis says bats play an important role in nature and need to be handled properly. She also reminds people who are bitten by a bat to get immediate medical attention.

Filed Under: Environment & Conservation

Four problems identified, on civil side, in film office flap

October 31, 2009 By

The Iowa Attorney General’s chief of staff this week confirmed the state may file lawsuits to try to recover some of the $32 million in state tax credits that have already been awarded to film and TV productions.

Governor Culver suspended the tax credit program in September and fired the manager of the state film office.  Earlier this month, officials confirmed a criminal investigation was underway. But Eric Tabor — chief of staff for the state’s attorney general — this past week said there’s a side of this investigation that will be played out in civil court as well.

“There’s really four ways that we think the law was just ignored and inappropriately applied,” Tabor told a legislative panel this week. 

Tabor said the film office was “a complete mess” and while investigators are searching, it’s hard to find proper documentation for many of the film and TV tax credits.

“Of course, the way the program worked is after a movie was completed, the filmmakers would submit their qualified expenditures and get a tax credit,” Tabor said.  “What we found in most cases was that there was extremely poor documentation of those expenditures, in some cases just a spreadsheet with no documentation to back up that spreadsheet.” 

The second problem, according to Tabor, was that the only expenses that qualified for the state tax credits were payments to Iowa residents or Iowa-based businesses.

“We think in numerous cases the requirement for an Iowa-based business was skirted and was not followed at all,” Tabor said. 

The state tax credits were not just available for the salaries paid to Iowans who worked on the films and for the expenses incurred in the state, though.  The tax credits also were available for investors in the movies.

“The way the film office was supplying those credits, it ended up oftentimes in a 50 percent credit when we think that in many cases it should have been a whole lot less than 50 percent because they were not applying the investment tax credit provisions correctly,” Tabor said. 

According to Tabor, it’s hard to see how some of the film and TV productions which did receive state tax credits had any economic impact in Iowa.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Politics & Government Tagged With: , , , ,