Iowa's Radio News Network
Republicans in the state legislature are proposing a series of policy changes they argue will lessen the burden of regulations on Iowa businesses.
Republicans in the House and Senate held public hearings in 11 cities this past winter, fielding complaints from over a thousand Iowans. Representative Dawn Pettengill, a Republican from Mount Auburn, says she learned Iowa businesses are buried with paperwork.
The Iowa Court of Appeals has sided with the state’s consumer advocate in a case of alleged “cramming”.
The word “cramming” is used when a company adds a service to a phone bill that the customer didn’t order, authorize or receive. The Iowa Consumer Advocate took up the case of an Iowa woman who complained a company called Cheap2Dial had charged her $47.17 on her phone bill. The company said the woman had subscribed to its service via its website, but a check of the information provided indicated the sign-up happened on a computer in another city and some of the information was wrong.
The Iowa Utilities Board ruled it was possible one of the woman’s children may have signed up online or it was a simple billing error rather than an attempt to defraud. But the Consumer Advocate wanted the Utilities Board to hold a hearing on the case, and went to court.
The Court of Appeals has ruled the Board should investigate further, noting if companies determine they can simply reimburse customers who complain, there is no incentive to stop the practice of “slamming” or “cramming” unwanted services on telephone bills.
An Iowa State University professor who studies tornadoes says he’s “amazed and shocked” by the destruction and loss of life from the tornadoes that tore across the south on Wednesday night.
“I ended up telling my students a week beforehand that the weather maps looked very much like the super outbreak from 1974,” says Bill Gallus, a professor of geological and atmospheric sciences at I.S.U. “I was stressing how serious the outlook for severe weather was.”
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was among the guest speakers at the unveiling of phase two of BioProcess Algae’s Grower Harvester algae bioreactors Friday afternoon. Vilsack later served as keynote speaker before a huge crowd at the Shenandoah Chamber and Industry Association’s annual meeting at the American Legion Country Club.
Vilsack says the algae plant gives Shenandoah an opportunity to showcase a new alternative energy form–one that uses CO2 from the Green Plains Renewable Energy ethanol plant next door and produces a renewable fuel source.
The former Iowa governor says such projects are important for the economies of rural communities–many of which are struggling these days. Vilsack says opportunities provided by industries with cutting-edge technology are important in keeping young people in local communities.
And, Vilsack says young people will leave rural communities–and take rural values with them–if opportunities aren’t provided on a local level. Vilsack says the Obama Administration has mandated the construction of four ethanol biorefineries in the country in the next 48 months, as well as research centers producing alternative feedstocks. He adds the president is clear in his goal of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil by a third.
By Mike Peterson, KMA Shenandoah
All full-time freshmen at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City will be getting i-Pads this fall. Steve Janowiak, Briar Cliff’s vice president of student development, says the I-Pad offers several encouraging pathways.
Janowiak says those include classroom and curricular-based pathways, along with co-curricular and extra-curricular pathways, as students learn to better manage time, information and communication and develop their 21st century leadership skills. Janowiak says input from the professors and other teachers will be key in determining which classes will benefit most from i-Pad use.
The faculty members, many of whom teach freshmen courses, are helping to create a “pilot” this term so the program will be ready to roll out in the fall. Janowiak says tablets were picked for this expenditure instead of traditional notebook or laptop computers.
He says, “We chose to go with the iPad because we want our students to be working with leading edge technology, learning on technology we think is going to be more prevalent and common in the future.” Sara Thompson, a librarian at the school, says they decided on the Apple iPad for several reasons.
“But we are staying flexible and it might be a different tablet in the future,” Thompson says. “It’s more about helping the students be ready for that marketplace they’re going to go into when they graduate that will probably be on tablets, no matter what kind of industry they go into.”
Students will pay for the iPads through the general fees they pay in tuition. Briar Cliff interviewed other institutions around the nation before deciding to go with the tablets.
By Jerry Oster, WNAX, Yankton
Despite hundreds complaints from Iowans about so-called “red light cameras,” a panel of senators has killed a bill that would have banned the devices.
Senator Brad Zaun, a Republican from Urbandale, sponsored the legislation after receiving a citation in the mail for a speeding violation in Cedar Rapids. Zaun says his son was caught on camera driving a car registered in the senator’s name.
“Obviously I don’t condone that. I had a talk with my son. I said, ‘Number one: you’re going to pay for this ticket and number two, you’ve got to watch your speed,’” the elder Zaun says.
Senator Zaun says he’s received lots of calls and emails from Iowans complaining about the new traffic enforcement tool. ”Just last night I talked to someone that had their car taken to a repair shop and the mechanic took it out for a test drive and got a violation and the next thing you know the owner of that car gets a ticket in the mail,” Zaun says.
Five Iowa communities — Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Clive, Council Bluffs and Sioux City — currently use cameras to monitor intersections or interstate traffic. Cops in those cities say the lights were installed to improve public safety. Cedar Rapids Police Lieutenant Jeff Hembera says the cameras have changed driver behavior.
“At the monitored intersections where we had put these systems up that were our highest accident intersections, they’ve dropped by 40 percent from ’09 to ’10 when we instituted those,” Hembera says.
The number of accidents along Interstate-380 as it runs through Cedar Rapids has declined by 54 percent since the cameras were installed.
But Senator Zaun speculates it’s more about generating revenue for the city. Cedar Rapids has collected nearly $3.5 million in fines in the first year alone. And Ben Stone, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, says the proliferation of traffic cameras and the pricey tickets people get in the mail aren’t popular with voters.
“The public has consistently rejected these systems,” Stone says. “There’s been 15 different votes on referendum around the country and every single time the voters reject this fiscal policy.”
But Senator Jeff Danielson, a Democrat from Cedar Falls, says for all their faults, the cameras appear to be working. ”We live in modern times,” Danielson says. “We should take advantage of modern technology if we can protect the public that way.”
While the bill to completely ban red-light cameras has been scuttled in the senate, there’ll be an effort in the Iowa House to limit how much a city in Iowa can charge for tickets issued after a camera captures a vehicle committing a traffic offense. The legislation would also require a uniform process for appealing a ticket.
Democrats and Republicans in Iowa’s congressional delegation suggest President Obama tried to hit a reset button with tonight’s State of the Union address.
Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from New Hartford, says Obama is trying to become a more “centrist” leader because of Republican gains in the 2010 elections.
“This is a miraculous transformation,” Grassley says. “I think it shows that he is responding to the electorate as you ought to with, using his words, the ‘shellacking’ that he took.”
O.KayHenderson.com