“Your goal is really to really be our international market think-tank, if you will,” Durham said to the board this morning, “to tell us those trends that are happening, emerging technology, emerging trends, what you’re seeing in the economy, things we can do on the legislative front — whether it’s on the state level or the federal level — so that we can create a more pro-growth, pro-business climate in the state of Iowa.”

The new agency is a different kind of organization called an “authority” rather than a “department” and Durham suggested that a few years down the road it could run without much, if any, taxpayer-support. Instead, the Economic Development Authority would be supported through a combination of fees the agency will charge businesses and other groups for “concierge services” and bonding programs.

The new Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress board includes the CEOs of Cedar Rapids-based Rockwell Collins, Des Moines-based Principal Financial and Pella-based Vermeer. Governor Branstad spoke to the group at its first meeting.

“We’re excited about the opportunities that are before us,” Branstad said. “We need the kind of guidance that the members of this board can give us. You’re the folks that are on the front lines doing exciting things and creating jobs in our state.”

Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds also addressed the board.

“You have the first-hand knowledge and the perspective that we need to help us identify barriers to growth and opportunities for improvements,” Reynolds said. “The charge of this board will really be to put together a comprehensive economic development strategy…With the U.S. economy continuing to struggle, the need for very strategy policies and investment to boost innovation, competitiveness and job creation really have never been greater, as I know all of you are very well aware of.”

Reynolds and Branstad will serve as co-chairs of the advisory board made of 11 business leaders from around the state.

AUDIO of the remarks Branstad and Reynolds made this morning.

The report says 218 of 251 school districts reported a drop in enrollment. The head of the Department of Education, Jason Glass, said during a recent budget hearing that enrollment would be dropping slightly, despite early projections that it would increase slightly.

Council Bluffs lost the most students in the last year, 92, followed by Glenwood with 87, and Fort Dodge with 82. Over the last five years the Cedar Rapids School District has lost the most students, dropping 968.

Fort Dodge, Keokuk, Newton and Council Bluffs were the others near the top in lost students in the last five years. The Des Moines, Iowa City and Waukee school districts reported the largest increase in number of students in the last year.

Waukee also saw the largest increase in enrollment over the last five years, upping the district head count by 1,623.

See the full enrollment report here: Enrollment 2010-2011 PDF

Each home costs about $6700. Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds, co-chair of the effort, says organizers hope to raise enough money to build 48 of them and give each family a thousand dollars worth of high-protein food packets.

“The campaign is uniquely Iowa, assisting Haitians who struggle to attain even the most basic necessities of life,” she says, “like food, water and shelter.”

Pastor Wadsene Anouzar will be the on-the-ground coordinator in Haiti for this “Village of Hope.” He spoke about the project this morning during a statehouse news conference.

Pastor Wadsene Anouzar of Village of Hope, Les Cayes, Haiti.

“I’ve been in Iowa only for three days and I have learned so much,” Anouzar said. “I have met so many down-to-earth people. I guess I’m going to go back to Haiti a new person.”

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. More than 600,000 Haitians who were displaced by the January, 2010 earthquake are still living in camps.

“Despite all the efforts that so many humitarian rights organizations have deployed to help these people, they are still living a very miserable life,” according to the Haitian pastor.

Ken DeYoung of Laurens, Iowa, is co-founder of the Global Compassion Network, the group which has purchased a plot of eight-and-half acres for this new neighborhood in Haiti.

He started flying humanitarian missions into Haiti after seeing the earthquake’s devastation on his computer screen here. He’s been ferrying doctors, nurses and mission teams into Haiti.

“As an American, as an Iowan, I feel a responsibility with the things that we’ve been blessed with and my faith tells me that I need to share the love of Christ through helping those less fortunate,” DeYoung said this morning during a statehouse news conference, “and certainly Haiti has plenty of the less fortunate.”

The new homes for Haiti are converted grain bins built by Sukup Manufacturing in Sheffield. Brett Nelson works at the company and helped design the “Safe-T-Home” that he said can be erected in a matter of hours.

“The 20-gauge galvanized steel construction assures up to 70 years of near-maintenance-free service,” he said. “The design ensures a structure that is extremely resistent to earthquake damage.”

Les Cayes, Haiti.

Ballasts or boxes filled with sand are used to anchor the home to the ground and engineers have determined the homes can withstand up to 130-mile-an-hour winds, an important design feature in hurricane-prone Haiti. If those boxes of sand are topped with soil, Nelson says they can be used as vegetable gardens.

Each unit costs $5700 to make at the Sukup plant in Sheffield. Another $1000 will be spent to ship the home to Haiti and lay concrete for the floor of the SafeTHome. Iowa Ag Secretary Bill Northey is the other co-chair of the fundraising effort, which is about a third of the way to its goal.

“These are the times of year that we think about how grateful we are for the things we have, how grateful we are to live in the state of Iowa and how much that means,” Northey said, “that we need to reach out and think about others at this time of year.” 

If you’d like to help, go to www.iowafoodandfamily.com or mail your donation to GCN, ATTN: special delivery, 1066 440th St., Linn Grove, IA 50133. 

AUDIO of today’s statehouse news conference.

Ron Paul duirng a speech in Des Moines.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and his campaign are aggressively challenging the record of perceived front-runner Newt Gingrich. 

Paul’s campaign is running an ad in Iowa and New Hampshire which attacks Gingrich for what it calls “serial hypocrisy.”

The ad features scary music plus clips from the Rush Limbaugh Show and from a variety of news media reports. When asked about the ad after a speech in Des Moines, Paul at first pretended not to know who Gingrich was.

“Who is that? Who is that? Oh, that guy that used to be the speaker?” Paul said earlier this afternoon, grinning. “I have to expose him for what he’s been doing all these years. That’s all we’re doing, trying to present the facts.”

Paul’s campaign manager says the ad is aimed at “debunking myths” about Gingrich. A spokesman for Gingrich says voters are choosing to support the former house speaker because no one else in the field of Republican candidates has achieved more conservative reforms or spent more time championing the cause of conservatism.  

AUDIO of Henderson report.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s campaign just unveiled an attack ad aimed at Gingrich, Mitt Romney and President Obama.

“One of the most common concerns that you hear from people looking to invest in wind energy is the short duration of the existing tax credit,” Braley says.

The tax credit is set to expire at the end of 2012. Sometime this December Congress is likely to consider a bill that would extend the payroll tax credit which is set to expire at the end of this year. Braley has sent a letter to congressional leaders, asking that an extension of the wind energy production tax credit be included in that tax package.

“So that people looking to make that investment would have a greater assurance of the length and security of that tax credit provision,” Braley says, “rather than have it go through the annual gymnastics of trying to make sure there would be added funding available for those tax credits.”

President Obama went to Pennsylvania this afternoon to give a speech urging congress to extend the payroll tax cut. Braley — a Democrat from Waterloo — says it’s the “type of thing” that should be embraced by both political parties, but Republicans are balking.

“Let’s be honest — right now is when we see a lot of political gamesmanship taking place as people are dealing with the aftermath of the select committee on deficit reduction and it’s failure to come up with a number,” Braley says. “And so I think it will be another political football and we’ll be struggling to find an opportunity to get it passed in the house.”

According to Braley, it’s “difficult to predict” whether all the Republicans in the U.S. House can agree on how to resolve the impasse.

“But Iowans can’t afford these typical political games on a payroll tax extension,” Braley says. “It’s something that going to benefit middle class Iowans and we need to come together and solve it now.”

Without action by congress, the payroll tax workers pay will go back up to six-point-two percent from its temporary rate, which is two percent lower. The average American household is paying about a thousand dollars less in taxes this year because of the lower tax rate. 

Braley made his comments this morning during a telephone conference call with reporters.

An Iowa leader in the Tea Party movement has launched a Facebook page to build a network of opponents to a gas tax hike.  Branstad says the Tea Party activists should wait for the report from the commission he appointed to study the issue.

“I think it is premature to take a stand on something until you know all the information and until the report’s available,” Branstad says, “so I’d certainly encourage legislators not to stake out a position before they know all the facts.” 

Branstad says as vehicles become more fuel efficient, there’s been a decline in the amount of gas taxes collected to finance repair and construction of the state’s transportation network.

“We need to make sure that the users pay the costs of maintainance and the improvements that need to be made,” Branstad says. “And we’re hearing from the counties and cities as well as the state that there are some needs out there.”

Branstad made his comments during his weekly news conference at the statehouse.

Iowa Tea Party activist Ryan Rhodes, the man who started the anti-gas-tax-hike page on Facebook, was not immediately available for comment.

“We probably have a distinct advantage, because we’ve worked extremely hard in Iowa…so we’ll just work that much harder,” she said yesterday during a news conference in Des Moines.

The Iowa GOP is waiting for New Hampshire’s secretary of state to move the date of that state’s primary before declaring a new date for the Iowa Caucuses — moves that were necessary after Florida officials decided to hold a presidential primary in the “sunshine state” on January 31, 2012.  South Carolina has moved it’s “first-in-the-south” primary to January 21. It means Iowa’s Caucuses may be held in the first week of January, with the possibility of a December date if New Hampshire’s primary moves much earlier. 

“I’ve spent many Christmases here in Iowa growing up in Iowa so it doesn’t bother me at all if I have to spend Christmas in Iowa,” Bachmann told reporters Tuesday. “I’ll stay with my relatives, I imagine.”

Bachmann has made much of her early roots in Waterloo and kicked off her campaign in June with a speech in the eastern Iowa city.  She touted a family reunion held in the Waterloo area after the Iowa Straw Poll on August 13, but later admitted the relatives Bachmann saw that weekend came to see her at her hotel in Waterloo as she did not go to the site of the family reunion. 

Bachmann’s victory in the Straw Poll, thus far, has been the high-water mark for Bachmann’s candidacy as polling in Iowa and nationally has shown her support among likely voters falling since mid-August, when Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the race.

Bachmann wrapped up a two-day campaign swing through Iowa with stops in Des Moines and Newton yesterday and a fundraiser in Grinnell last night for The Family Leader, a group of social conservatives working to make gay marriage illegal in Iowa. Bachmann is among the six candidates who have agreed to speak at The Family Leader’s “Thanksgiving Family Forum” on November 19.

Linn County Republicans last night selected Cindy Golding to run for the open state senate seat representing the city of Marion and other sections north and west of Cedar Rapids. This morning, GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann spoke by phone with Radio Iowa.

“I called Cindy this morning and I left a voice mail for her and I will be in Cedar Rapids Monday and I will be happy to be raising money and campaigning for her,” Bachmann said.

The special election is November 8th and Golding is more than likely to face Liz Mathis, a former eastern Iowa television anchor who has said she’ll seek the Democratic Party’s nomination in the district next week. A Republican victory in this race would send the Iowa Senate into partisan deadlock, with 25 Democrats and 25 Republicans. Bachmann’s Iowa campaign manager is Kent Sorenson, one of the 24 Republicans who currently serve in the state senate.

“We want to see the senate have another Republican,” Bachmann said this morning, “so we are looking forward to her victory.”

Bachmann spoke with Radio Iowa as she made her way to an airport in Florida, as Florida is where the Republican candidates gathered last night for a nationally televised debate. Bachmann suggests on key issues, especially immigration, voters last night saw the flaws in Rick Perry’s support of a Texas law which grants the benefit of in-state college tuition to the children of illegal immigrants.  Bachmann presents herself as the only “proven” conservative.

“This is an election when we shouldn’t settle for a candidate,” Bachmann said. “And every four years conservatives are told they need to settle and they need to step back for a candidate who is moderate or perhaps a compromise candidate,” Bachmann said. “In this election, of all elections, we need to have a bold, clear distinction with our candidate.” 

Bachmann’s support in polls both nationally and in Iowa has been falling since Perry entered the race in mid-August.

Food spread at Blue Zone announcement.

Governor Branstad has joined executives with the state’s largest insurance company, urging Iowa communities to consider seeking what they call “Blue Zone” status.

Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans to designate 10 Iowa communities as “Blue Zones” over the next five years, sending in consultants who will show that city’s residents 108 different ways to life a healthier life.

Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Sheild CEO John Forsyth says most chronic diseases and more than 20 types of cancer are linked to unhealthy lifestyles.

“The good news is when you start to look at this and you look at people’s health status, only 20 percent of it is genetics, so what it means is 80 percent of our health status is in our control,” Forsyth says. “And when you take a step back, that’s really powerful and, in fact, that’s what ‘Blue Zones’ are all about. Let’s take control of our health status.”

Wellmark will conduct an on-line “webinar” on September 27 to let Iowans learn more about the “Blue Zone” project.  

The governor says he’s endorsing the private company’s initiative in hopes of getting Iowa to his goal of being the healthiest state in the country.

“We are not trying to pass a bunch of restrictive laws,” Branstad says. “What we are trying to do is demonstrate the opportunities to live a healthier lifestyle, something that’s better for people themselves.”

Dan Buettner, the consultant who created the “Blue Zone” concept, says Americans now live in “environments of ease and excess” and the lifestyle changes he’s outlined can help Iowans live longer and more fulfilling lives.

“We don’t come imposing anything,” he says. “What we bring is 108 evidence-based interventions, some of them are policies, that have worked elsewhere at lowering obesity rates or lowering cardiovascular disease.”

According to Buettner, making streets and sidewalks safer for pedestrians and bicyclists can raise the physical activity of residents in the area by as much as 40 percent.

 Listen to today’s Wellmark news conference about Blue Zones