Radio Iowa

Iowa's Radio News Network

You are here: Home / Archives for O. Kay Henderson

Treasurer says taxpayers shouldn’t pay for sexual harassment case

By

Mike Fitzgerald.

State Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald is asking Iowa’s governor to ensure Iowa taxpayers don’t foot the bill for the judgment the former communications director for Republicans in the Iowa Senate won from a jury last week.

“We do have a tight budget and now we have this $2.2 million for those scoundrels up in the Republican senate to pay,” Fitzgerald says.

A jury awarded the money to Kirsten Anderson who filed a lawsuit charging her complaints about sexual harassment were disregarded and she was fired from her job on the Senate Republican Caucus Staff for complaining. Anderson’s bosses say she was fired for poor work and nothing else.

Fitzgerald, who is a Democrat, says testimony in the trial brought appalling behavior to light and he says Governor Kim Reynolds immediately should have insisted on changes in the legislature.

“She is the leader of this state. She’s the leader of the Republican Party,” Fitzgerald says. “She should have demanded a change….that we have professional operation in every area of state government.”

Reynolds told reporters last week she has a “zero tolerance policy” when it comes to sexual harassment in the state agencies she oversees, but Reynolds said she has no control over personnel policies in the legislature, which is a separate branch of state government.

Senate Republicans will meet privately this Friday. One Republican senator has publicly called for Senate Republican Leader Bill Dix to step down from his leadership post. The second-ranking Republican in the state senate has issued a statement supporting Dix.

Buena Vista is fourth Iowa county with open burning ban

By

Burn ban map from State Fire Marshal’s website.

A fourth Iowa county has issued a ban on open burning and it took effect at noon today

Buena Vista County, which includes the city of Storm Lake, is the latest county to have a burning ban in force. A burn ban has been in effect in Ottumwa and all of Wapello County since last Wednesday. Crawford County’s ban on open burning was triggered last Thursday. Plymouth County’s ban took effect at 8 a.m. this past Saturday.

Under state law, local officials can ask the State Fire Marshal to establish bans on open burning “during periods of extremely dry conditions.”

Those caught violating the bans can be charged with a simple misdemeanor.

Democrat issues proposal for covering 11,000 Iowa kids who may lose insurance

By

Des Moines pediatrician Amy Shriver with Senator Janet Petersen.

Democrats in the Iowa Senate warn about 11,000 Iowa kids are in danger of being uninsured because their families may be unable to buy individual insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act’s exchange next year.

Senator Janet Petersen, a Democrat from Des Moines, is calling on Republican Governor Kim Reynolds to approve a stop-gap plan for the parents who to get insurance for those children.

“They shouldn’t have to worry about wrapping their kid in a bubble wrap for 2018 because they can’t get health insurance and they can’t afford to have their kid break an arm on the playground,” Petersen said during a news conference at the statehouse. “It’s just simply wrong. We need answers.”

Petersen’s proposal would let those parents buy private insurance through the state-run HAWK-I program. The program currently subsidizes insurance for about 60,000 children who live in a household where the yearly income is at or below 300 percent of the poverty line. Petersen indicated federal bureaucrats would have to grants Iowa a waiver to implement the stop-gap proposal she’s offering for 11,000 more Iowa kids.

“Families’ financial security depends on answers,” Petersen said. “Congress is not coming up with solutions.”

AUDIO of Petersen’s news conference, 14:00

Medica is the only insurance company that plans to offer individual insurance policies on the state’s Affordable Care Act exchange in 2018 and the company has warned premiums will jump 43 percent. Iowa’s insurance commissioner has offered a plan that might lessen the premium hike, but federal officials have to provide a waiver for his proposal, too.

A spokeswoman for Governor Reynolds issued a written statement late this morning, saying “Iowa’s Obamacare marketplace is collapsing” and Reynolds is focused on getting the insurance commissioner’s plan approved “so every one of those 72,000 Iowans—both adults and children—will have a health insurance option next year.”

(This post was updated at 11:35 a.m. with additional information)

Iowa Democrats elect Troy Price as new party chairman (AUDIO)

By

Troy Price

The Iowa Democratic Party’s new chairman is promising to “fix” the party’s message and infrastructure after election losses in 2014 and 2016.

Troy Price was elected chairman this morning.

“Our party wants get to work, but we’re only going to be able to get to work if our party is working well,” Price said in a speech to the Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee. “We’ve lost the trust of the very people we’re trying to help. Our message is fractured and we are focused too much on antiquated ideas and old thoughts and not enough on finding solutions.”

Price, who is 36 years old, replaces Derek Eadon who resigned as the party’s leader in late June for health reasons. Price was the Iowa Democratic Party’s executive director for the 2014 election cycle and he’s worked in the past for Hillary Clinton, Tom Vilsack and Chet Culver.

“I want to shake up this party and make sure that it is as strong as it possibly can be,” Price told reporters after his election. “It is clear that our party has had challenges over the last few cycles and I’ve seen them firsthand. I know what they are and so I want to utilize those experiences to make sure that we are doing something different and that are doing things differently heading into 2018.”

Price seemed to channel his inner Trump as he gave a four-minute speech to the Democrats on the party’s state central committee who elected him.

“We can get to work winning and that winning’s going to start on August 8th,” Price said, “and we can continue to win all the way through Election Day.”

August 8th is the date of the special election in the Fairfield area for a seat in the Iowa House.

Price started his new job as party chairman immediately. Price, who thanked his husband for being supportive of his decision to seek the party leadership post, is the first openly gay chairman of either of the state’s major political parties.

“The chances that we have seen on LGBTQ rights since I was a high schooler in the late 1990s to where we are today has just been monumental,” Price told reporters early this afternoon. “There’s a lot more work, though, that needs to be done. The Iowa Democratic Party has always stood for that sort of change.”

Price beat two other Democrats in the balloting for the chairmanship, though no vote tally was released. Julie Stauch, one of the unsuccessful candidates for the party leadership slot, said the party is “at a crossroads.”

“It is not enough to care, to know people. We need people who can innovate and move us forward,” Staunch said. “…Right now, where the Iowa Democratic Party is today, being cautious is the biggest risk you’ll ever take.”

Bob Krause, the other unsuccessful candidate, argued the chair needs to provide “good cover” for the Democrats who are running for office in 2018.

“We need a ‘bad cop’ in the Iowa Democratic Party,” Krause said in his four-minute We need somebody that will attack, attack, attack, attack the Republicans.”

AUDIO of speeches from Krause, Price and Stauch

Price, the new party chair, is a native of Durant, Iowa. Earlier this month, he left a job working for one of the six Democrats who’s running for governor. Price told reporters he has promised all the candidates that he and the party will be neutral in the primary race.

Iowa payrolls expand by 11,200 in June

By

A new state report indicates about 11,000 people were hired by Iowa businesses and governments during the month of June.

“This is the state’s largest gain in more than two decades, when it picked up 9200 jobs in June of 1994,” says Cory Kelly, a spokesman for Iowa Workforce Development.

Iowa’s unemployment rate rose slightly in June, to 3.2 percent, but Kelly says there’s no correlation between the figures on unemployment in the state and the data about job gains in Iowa during June.

“A lot of the growth was driven by both government and private sector adding jobs,” Kelly says. “Industries that are seasonal in nature all grew this month, with the largest increases being in recreational and eating and drinking establishments. Government added 4000 jobs (in June) with the gains largely being attributable to local government — think summer programs, community pools, ‘Mother Nature’ adding to our grounds keeping operations.”

The report indicates Iowa factories added 1600 jobs in June.

Iowa Democrats to elect new chair tomorrow

By

The Iowa Democratic Party’s governing board will meet tomorrow to elect a new leader.

The Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee elected Derek Eadon as chairman in January, but Eadon resigned in late June. The 33-year-old announced he has a chronic pain condition that will require radiation treatments.

Andrea Phillips of Ankeny, an unsuccessful candidate for the Iowa House in 2016, has served as interim chair for the past few weeks, but does not want the job permanently. Three Democrats have stepped publicly forward to compete for the post.

The Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee is scheduled to convene at 10 a.m. tomorrow in Des Moines. The election of a new party chair is the only item of business on the agenda.

Pate: feds must do better in working with states on voter system security

By

Paul Pate. (file photo)

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate is expressing frustration with federal officials who are warning voter registration systems maintained by the states are in “imminent danger” of being “hacked.” The U.S. Homeland Security secretary said this week that states that fail to ask for help to prevent cyber intruders are “nuts.”

“I’m disappointed in the secretary,” Pate said today on Iowa Public Radio’s “River to River” program. “I think that if he seriously wants our cooperation, he ought to show up at our meeting. He sent a representative to our national meeting who was generous enough to sit in the meeting, but he didn’t have a single answer for any of us when we asked the hard questions.”

Pate, who is a Republican, was among the state election officials who held their summer meeting earlier this month. Pate said federal officials need to provide him and other election officials from other states with a security clearance so they can learn more details about the hacking.

“I find it very frustrating that Homeland Security has not done a good job on working with the states. We had a reasonable working relationship prior to this cycle,” Pate said. “They would send us information about certain challenges they were monitoring and we would take action.”

Pate said that changed during the 2016 election in President Obama’s last year in office and the Trump Administration has continued withholding important information from the states, according to Pate.

On another high-profile issue, Pate indicated he and other state officials who are in charge of elections hope to speak with President Trump about Trump’s assertion that as many as five million “illegal” votes were cast in the 2016 presidential election.

“I welcome the president to sit down with us so we can walk him through the process, so he understands the difference between fraud and, perhaps, some of the other challenges that elections face that can disenfranchise people,” Pate said.

For example, Pate said casting more than one ballot in an election is illegal, but merely being a registered voter in two different places is not.

The commission Trump appointed to investigate voter fraud met for the first time this week. Pate said he supports efforts to “reassure Americans” that their votes count, but Pate said he’s “not seeing millions” of fraudulent votes.

New Bettendorf psych hospital, new outpatient center in Cedar Rapids get state approval

By

A state board has finally approved long-standing plans for a new outpatient facility in Cedar Rapids and a psychiatric hospital in Bettendorf.

For the past two years, a Tennessee-based firm called Strategic Behavioral Health has been trying to get approval from state regulators to open a 72-bed psych hospital in Bettendorf. On Thursday, the Iowa Health Facilities Council finally voted to green-light the project over the objections of two existing hospitals in the Quad Cities. Advocates of the new facility say there’s a growing need for the kind of in-patient psychiatric care the hospital will provide.

On Wednesday, the Iowa Health Facilities Council approved a Cedar Rapids eye doctor’s plan to open an outpatient surgery center. The council had denied four previous applications. Dr. Lee Birchansky has tried for nearly 20 years to expand, but the Iowa Health Facilities Council rejected his previous applications after objections from Cedar Rapids hospitals.

In June, Birchansky sued the Iowa Health Facilities Council, arguing it denies his patients’ access to lower-cost alternatives by protecting the health care market for existing facilities. The group that took on his case today announced plans to continue with that lawsuit, in hopes of getting rid of the State of Iowa’s “certificate of need” process altogether. The Institute for Justice argues it’s a regulatory “permission slip” that keeps competitors from entering the health care system.

Non-profit hospitals argue that without regulation, new for-profit competitors will cherry-pick the healthiest patients with the means to pay — and non-profit facilities will be saddled with patients who can’t pay for their care or who have their most expensive, complicated conditions.

Muscatine man admits to possessing, sending child porn

By

A Muscatine man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison on child pornography charges.

Thirty-six-year-old Casey John Blain of Muscatine pleaded guilty to both possessing and distributing child pornography. A judge has ordered him to pay $12,500 in restitution in addition to serving 12 years in a federal prison.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children called authorities in March of last year after getting a tip about Blain. Blain admitted in court that he had at least 636 photos and videos of child pornography in his possession and had shared the porn with others using a messaging app for smart phones.

Unemployment rate in Iowa increased in June

By

The state’s unemployment rate increased slightly last month, to 3.2 percent.

“One thing we see as you come into the summer months is new entrants into the job market,” says Cory Kelly, a spokesman for Iowa Workforce Development. “All of our college graduates come in, so that increases the unemployment rate.”

Nearly 54,000 Iowans were unemployed in June. State officials report the number of Iowans in the workforce has decreased by about 3200 compared to a year ago.