Advocacy groups and some Iowa lawmakers are challenging the Iowa Department of Transportation’s policy against issuing driver’s licenses or other identification cards to those granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread.

After the jump I’ve posted a bunch of links about finances and spending, large and small.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency submitted lengthy comments this week on Iowa’s draft strategy for reducing nutrients in waterways. I’ve posted the full text of EPA Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks’ letter after the jump. The EPA found more problems with the “nonpoint source” part of the strategy, which primarily addresses runoff from farms. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship drafted the nonpoint source part of the nutrient strategy, largely without input from Iowa Department of Natural Resources staff who are experts on agricultural runoff. Under “general comments,” the EPA confirmed that rejecting numeric criteria for nutrient pollution from farms “does not reflect the EPA’s current thinking.” The Iowa Farm Bureau Federation applauded that aspect of the nutrient strategy. We’ll see whose view holds sway in the final version.

The Iowa DNR was responsible for drafting the “point source” part of the nutrient strategy, which addresses municipal and industrial discharges (such as from wastewater treatment facilities) into rivers and streams. The EPA submitted only minor suggestions for improving the point source section.

Iowa citizens and advocacy groups have until January 18 to comment on the nutrient strategy.

Last week the Iowa Department of Natural Resources extended the public comment period on the state’s proposed strategy “to assess and reduce nutrients delivered to Iowa waterways and the Gulf of Mexico.” Nutrients have become “Iowa’s most widespread water pollution problem” and are the primary cause of the gulf’s “dead zone.” The Environmental Working Group’s recent report on “Murky Waters” explains the causes of Iowa’s chronically poor water quality.

Interest groups aligned with corporate agriculture had extensive input while the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship drafted its part of the nutrient reduction strategy, even shutting out the Iowa DNR’s experts on agricultural runoff. For more background on the proposed state policy, which relies on voluntary efforts to curb pollution from farms, click here or here.

Iowans have until January 18 to comment on the nutrient strategy. Many groups and individuals have already submitted their feedback. After the jump I’ve posted comments from the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter. The contrast is striking.  

Catching up on some news from late December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources have negotiated a draft work plan on inspecting and issuing permits to confined-animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Iowa by the end of calendar year 2018. Follow me after the jump for background and details.

In November on Bleeding Heartland, desmoinesdem posted a review of reaction to Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy, which aspires to clean up the nitrogen and phosphorous pollution that together with Iowa's chronic soil erosion is keeping the state's waters brown and green instead of clear and clean.

Now the public comment deadline for the new strategy has been extended by two weeks, giving Iowans one more chance to weigh in before the comment period ends January 18.

Iowa has a lot of strengths as a place to live, but good public transportation isn’t one of them. In most of our cities and towns, adults need to drive to get to work, school, or shops for necessities.

That’s going to be a lot more difficult for approximately 5,000 Iowa residents who were brought to this country as undocumented immigrants during childhood.  

Judging from this thread, Bleeding Heartland readers are interested in scenario spinning about the 2014 Iowa gubernatorial election. Former Governor Chet Culver is among several Democrats considering the race. I’ve posted a few thoughts about that prospect after the jump.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

UPDATE: Dave Wasserman continues to update presidential election popular vote totals on this spreadsheet. As of December 29, Barack Obama has exceeded 51 percent of the popular vote and is nearly 5 million votes ahead of Mitt Romney: 65,892,366 votes to 60,926,847 votes.

The plan to extend Highway 100 through the Rock Island Preserve in Linn County made the Sierra Club’s list of worst transportation projects nationwide. No Iowa projects made the group’s “best” list from the same report on Smart Choices, Less Traffic (pdf). After the jump I’ve enclosed a statement from the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter and excerpts from the full report.

Polk County District Court Judge Robert Hutchison has ordered the Iowa Department of Public Health to list both parents on a child’s death certificate, regardless of the parents’ gender, and to modify the death certificate issued to two married mothers who sued the department earlier this year.  

Governor Terry Branstad begrudges the working poor a little extra money and wants to cut total compensation for thousands of state employees, whom he considers overpaid. But where his favorite appointees are concerned, Branstad uses bonuses or a housing allowance to evade salary caps on senior positions in state government.

Erin Jordan has the details in two must-read articles for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Highlights are after the jump.

Iowa State University President Steven Leath is trying to restrict the kind of agricultural research that can be conducted at the Harkin Institute of Public Policy, I learned from a must-read article by Hannah Furfaro for the Ames Tribune. The dispute over academic freedom may prompt U.S. Senator Tom Harkin to sever ties from the institute established last year.

Iowa Department of Natural Resources Director Chuck Gipp is asking for $1.3 million in additional state funding to help his agency hire eleven new livestock facility inspectors for next year. Gipp has been affiliated with agricultural interest groups throughout his career. He just endorsed a strategy on keeping nutrients of out waterways that was “fiercely criticized” by Iowa DNR staffers with the most expertise on farm runoff.

Why would Gipp suddenly ask for more DNR inspectors? According to his own testimony, he’s trying to keep the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing Clean Water Act provisions against Iowa livestock farms.

Talk about a bolt from the blue: State Representative Brian Quirk announced today that he is resigning from the Iowa House. His decision forces a special election in House district 52, where voters just elected the Democrat to his seventh term.

UPDATE: Added details on Quirk’s new job below.

State Representative Chuck Isenhart has formally asked Iowa Department of Natural Resources Director Chuck Gipp and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey to extend the public comment period on Iowa’s latest water quality policy. Shortly before Thanksgiving, officials revealed a draft strategy “to assess and reduce nutrients delivered to Iowa waterways and the Gulf of Mexico.” The 45-day public comment period falls mostly during the holiday season.

Isenhart, the ranking Democrat on the Iowa House Environmental Protection Committee, pointed out that a 30-day extension of the comment period would allow for feedback from the Watershed Planning Advisory Council and from relevant Iowa House and Senate committees. The legislature’s 2013 session will open on January 14, ten days after the current public comment period expires.

Isenhart also suggested that an extension would be fair to stakeholder groups and members of the public who didn’t have the “privilege” of reading the draft nutrient strategy before last week. Stakeholders whose leaders got a “head start” on reviewing the policy before the official roll-out include agricultural commodity groups, the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, the Iowa League of Cities, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, and the Iowa Waste Water Association.

The full text of Isenhart’s letter is below. Last month Gipp denied a request to extend public comments on a complex air quality permit linked to a large fertilizer plant construction project.

Iowa officials formally unveiled a new strategy yesterday “to assess and reduce nutrients delivered to Iowa waterways and the Gulf of Mexico.” As the Des Moines Register’s Perry Beeman reported last week, the policy related to farm runoff was drafted without input from key Iowa Department of National Resources personnel. Instead, it closely resembles positions advocated by the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.

The best time to roll out a policy that goes against the public interest is when few people are paying attention. Citizens will have only 45 days to comment on the new Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. Most of the comment period falls during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s holiday season. More details are below.

Leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People urged Governor Terry Branstad yesterday to change Iowa’s extreme restrictions on voting rights for ex-felons and to address the huge race disparity in Iowa incarceration rates.

More than 100 scientists and researchers from 27 Iowa colleges and universities have signed a new statement on the relationship between climate change and weather extremes like the drought of 2012.

Governor Terry Branstad’s plan to transfer water quality programs from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship stalled during the 2011 legislative session. However, state officials appear to be letting corporate agriculture interests control Iowa’s water pollution rules anyway.

Policy statements from the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation were lifted almost verbatim for a new state plan to reduce runoff from farms, according to an exclusive report by Perry Beeman in today’s Des Moines Register.

Catching up on some news from last week, Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen hired Carmine Boal to be chief clerk in the Iowa House. She replaces Charlie Smithson, who will be the new legal counsel for Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz.

Democratic candidates for the state Senate haven’t fared well in western Iowa lately, so the new Senate district 6 hasn’t been on my radar, even though it’s an open seat. However, campaign finance reports indicate that Democrats are not conceding this district, so I decided to post a profile of the race. Background on both candidates is below, along with a district map and some of the campaign rhetoric voters have been hearing.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? More posts related to Tuesday’s elections are going up today and tomorrow, so after the jump I’ve enclosed a few links on stories not related to any political campaigns.

This is an open thread. Don’t forget to turn your clocks back one hour before you go to sleep on Saturday night.

After landing significant state and local tax incentives, a large corporation confirmed plans yesterday to expand its fertilizer plant in Port Neal (Woodbury County). Officials hailed the “single largest capital investment” in Iowa history, eclipsing the $1.4 billion fertilizer plant project announced in September for Lee County.

More details and reaction to the CF Industries project are after the jump.

Later this fall, Governor Terry Branstad will begin negotiating new two-year contracts with several labor unions that represent state employees. He will come to the table armed with research that purportedly shows Iowa has been over-compensating its public workers.

In a surprising turn of events, Republican challengers are putting an obscure vote on water bottles at the center of their attacks on Iowa Senate Democrats. Follow me after the jump for background on this year’s equivalent to the non-existent “heated sidewalks” of 2010.

The city of Windsor Heights will take the Iowa Department of Transportation to court over the denial of a request to place speed enforcement traffic cameras on Interstate 235.

Medicaid coverage of abortion has been a contentious issue in the Iowa legislature since 2011 and will be on lawmakers’ agenda during next year’s session. I was surprised to learn that Iowa is already more restrictive than most other states when it comes to Medicaid coverage of abortion in cases of rape.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has denied a request to extend the public comment period on the air permit for a large fertilizer plant to be constructed in southeast Iowa. Wallace Taylor, a Cedar Rapids attorney representing Lee County citizens who oppose the project, asked for a 60-day extension to the October 19 deadline for submitting comments. He cited the complexity of the Iowa Fertilizer Company’s permit application, which involves “unique processes, numerous sources and pollutants, and 23 separate draft permits.”

Taylor gave me permission to publish the relevant e-mail correspondence with DNR Director Chuck Gipp below. He added that he had “never seen the DNR deny a request to extend a comment period before, especially in a case like this.”

Governor Terry Branstad and state economic development officials offered the Egyptian firm Orascom the largest incentive package in Iowa history to build the fertilizer plant in Lee County. Iowa Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Joe Bolkcom has argued that taxpayers “got taken to the cleaners” on the deal, since Orascom would have built its factory in Iowa even without incentives totaling more than $1 million per permanent job created. An Illinois economic development official told the Quad-City Times that the state of Illinois “never put an offer [to Orascom] on the table. We recognized early on that Iowa’s bid was excessive, and we were not going to engage in a bidding war.”

Forty years ago today, Congress enacted the Clean Water Act by overriding a presidential veto. Global Water Policy Project Director Sandra Postel is dead on: “As game-changing laws go, the 1972 U.S. Clean Water Act ranks high.”

Though Iowa is still not in full compliance with this law (and may never be during my lifetime), there’s still some good news in the links I’ve enclosed below.

Yesterday the State Environmental Protection Commission opted not to ban the practice of spreading manure on soybeans. It was another sign that Governor Terry Branstad’s mission to reorient that commission toward agricultural interests has succeeded.

A report on alleged misconduct by three football coaches on suspension from Lincoln High School in Des Moines put bullying on my mind this weekend. After the jump I’ve posted background on the football coach story and on the statewide bullying prevention summit that Governor Terry Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds will host in late November.

All topics are welcome in this open thread.  

The full-time voter fraud investigator hired by Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz produced his second batch of arrests yesterday. In contrast to the first group of people charged (alleged non-citizens who had voted), the latest arrests involve two convicted felons who registered to vote this year but have not cast ballots.

The official affidavits don’t include any evidence that these people intended to vote unlawfully. One believed his voting rights had been restored, while the other claimed she wasn’t paying attention to what was on the voter registration form she signed. Details are after the jump.

To coincide with today’s annual conference of the Iowa Environmental Council, I’ve compiled some recent news related to Iowa water quality after the jump.

Iowa Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Joe Bolkcom asserted today that state and local tax dollars were “wasted” on a deal to lure a company to build a fertilizer plant in Lee County, because the Orascom corporation already had huge financial incentives to build in Iowa.

Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation officials announced yesterday that three residents of Council Bluffs have been arrested and charged with election misconduct, a class D felony.  

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a former governor of Kansas, made clear last week that the Obama administration will work with governors who are reluctant to expand Medicaid eligibility in their states.

Yesterday a Polk County District Court judge denied Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s request to dismiss a lawsuit over emergency rules on checking Iowa’s voter rolls for non-citizens.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday Schultz answered questions about the rules at the Iowa legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee meeting. His responses didn’t impress the Democratic lawmakers on that committee.

A bidding war between Iowa and Illinois ended yesterday, as an Egyptian company’s representative stood with Governor Terry Branstad to announce plans for a $1.4 billion fertilizer plant in Lee County. A package of state, federal, and local tax incentives worth hundreds of millions of dollars will support the project, costing taxpayers more than $1 million for each of the 165 permanent jobs created.

Hope the Bleeding Heartland community has been enjoying the long holiday weekend. This is an open thread. I’ve enclosed some Labor Day-related links after the jump, including an excerpt from the Iowa Policy Project’s recent report on wage theft, which “deprives low-wage Iowa workers of an estimated $600 million, deprives state and local government of revenue, and puts law-abiding businesses at a competitive disadvantage.”

Some politicians at the federal and state level would have you believe that rules intended to protect public health and the environment are “job-killing regulations.” Congressional Republicans and some Democrats have voted several times to block air quality rules that would force certain industrial plants to retrofit. Although the Obama administration has enacted promising rules to reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants, President Barack Obama has occasionally validated Republican scaremongering over pollution regulations. For instance, he delayed new smog rules from going into effect in 2011, citing a concern for “reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.”

The reality of pollution control looks different. It looks like hundreds of construction workers getting a job, and Ottumwa-area businesses reaping the benefits.