A poll in the field this week is measuring Iowans’ views of the University of Iowa and whether certain changes would increase the perceived value of a degree from the university. The phrases enclosed below reflect what one respondent was able to recall from the survey, which lasted approximately 15 minutes.

I hope to update this post with much more detail about the question wording. If you receive this call (or any message-testing poll), please take notes and send them to the e-mail address at the bottom right of the Bleeding Heartland front page.

The survey included at least one question about the performance of the University of Iowa’s new president, Bruce Harreld. In interviews with Iowa Public Television and Iowa Public Radio today, Harreld said he has been “building trust” by meeting with as many stakeholders on campus as possible. He also endorsed a plan to seek more state funding for the university next year. Jeff Charis-Carlson reported for the Iowa City Press-Citizen on November 6 that the “faculty vitality” proposal would provide $4.5 million for recruiting new faculty and increasing salaries of tenure-track faculty during the 2017 fiscal year. Iowa Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter orchestrated adding $4.5 million to the budget request for the University of Iowa a few days after the regents hired Harreld. The move was widely perceived as an effort to placate those who disapproved of the hiring before a scheduled meeting of the Faculty Senate. Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” program will broadcast the full episode with Harreld this Friday and Sunday.

When Kraig Paulsen announced plans to resign as Iowa House speaker and not seek re-election in 2016, he indicated he would continue to work as an in-house attorney for the trucking company CRST International Inc.

News broke last week that Paulsen has landed a high-paying position at Iowa State University’s College of Business. University officials waived a policy requiring such jobs to be advertised when they offered Paulsen the job, Vanessa Miller reported for the Cedar Rapids Gazette on November 6.

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

In what the Des Moines Register’s editors described as a “new low in the out-of-control race to keep or attract employers,” a state board unanimously approved $4.75 million in financial assistance to Kraft Heinz, which plans to replace a large factory in Davenport with a new facility on the northwest side of town. Although at least 900 people are expected to lose their jobs in the downsizing, the city of Davenport will put up $10 million in tax-increment financing to support the project. The Iowa Department of Transportation and the city are expected to commit $5.8 million for road work around the new factory site too. Never one to shy away from handing state funds to large corporations, Iowa Economic Development Authority Director Debi Durham has let all downsizing companies know that the state of Iowa’s wallet is open: “‘Will I take this deal any day? You bet,’ Durham said Thursday morning. ‘This is a future play.’” Durham also told reporters she “expects the state to do more of these kinds of deals in the future, as more massive companies merge.”

Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson characterized the Kraft Heinz incentive package as “bizarre,” adding, “The idea of providing public assistance for a company that has billions of dollars of annual sales cannot make sense to anybody.” The Register’s editors noted, “the company could get $20.75 million in state and local assistance,” which “works out to nearly $43,700 for every job Kraft Heinz agrees to keep”–and roughly 200 of the jobs the company promised to save will pay less than $37,000 a year.”

Speaking of lousy deals, Iowa’s plan to privatize Medicaid looks worse and worse. A post in progress will discuss this policy in more detail; for now I enclose below excerpts from several stories by Jason Clayworth for the Des Moines Register. In recent weeks, Clayworth has exposed damning facts, including:

• Some claims made in bidding documents from the four private insurers chosen to manage Medicaid in Iowa “contain unverifiable data, misleading statements or half-truths.”

• No data support the government’s estimate that privatizing Medicaid would save $51 million from the state budget during the first six months of the program.

• The insurers selected to manage Medicaid “have each been held accountable in other states for serious service and administrative errors, including some that wrongly delayed or denied medical services to poor residents […].”

• Iowa’s Medicaid director Mikki Stier “had improper communications with an insurance company consultant and former lawmaker during a critical review period that ended with the for-profit company being selected” as a managed care provider for Medicaid.

A November 6 letter from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to Stier enumerated “significant concerns” about the transition to managed care; excerpts from that letter are at the end of this post. Federal officials and Iowa Senate Democrats have scheduled “listening sessions” around the state to focus on Medicaid privatization. Click through for meeting details, as well as a list of state and federal officials to contact with concerns. Only the feds can stop this train by denying the necessary waivers. Branstad administration officials have been unmoved by any of the Register’s revelations or by the risks to vulnerable Iowans, which many speakers raised during Legislative Oversight Committee hearings on November 3.

The Iowa Department of Administrative Services presents itself as “an organization of excellence, providing services and support to meet our stakeholder agencies’ needs and ever mindful of good stewardship in resource utilization.” Among other responsibilities, DAS “handles personnel matters for all of state government.”

Yet the agency’s former top attorney Ryan Lamb didn’t comply with various personnel rules during the nearly three years he worked for state government, State Auditor Mary Mosiman revealed yesterday in a detailed report (pdf). The headline news from the audit: Lamb was “overpaid” and “unqualified” for his job. Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press,

A key lawyer in Gov. Terry Branstad’s administration wasn’t qualified for his position and was paid $22,600 that he shouldn’t have received while on military leave, according to a report released Thursday.

Department of Administrative Services chief legal counsel Ryan Lamb also failed to record vacation days and was promoted and given major raises even though he didn’t have a resume on file […].

That sounds bad. But wait! There’s more.

Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s authority to veto funding intended to keep two in-patient mental health facilities open. Twenty Democratic state lawmakers and the president of Iowa’s largest public-employee union filed the lawsuit in July, arguing that the governor’s line-item vetoes violated Iowa Code provisions requiring that the state “shall operate” mental health institutes in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda. But Judge Staskal found that “Existing statutes cannot limit the Governor’s item veto authority,” which “is of constitutional magnitude. The only limitations that have been placed on that authority have been derived from the language of the constitution itself. […] And, there is no language in the item veto provision which suggests a statutory limitation on the power it creates. It is elementary that, to the extent there is conflict between a constitutional provision and a statute, the constitution prevails.”

I enclose below longer excerpts from the court ruling, which can be read in full here. Mark Hedberg, the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs, told Bleeding Heartland they “are preparing an appeal” to the Iowa Supreme Court “and will ask that it be expedited.”

Numerous large-scale hog confinements in five Iowa counties are not following recommended practices for applying manure to farmland, according to findings the advocacy group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement released today. Under Iowa law, livestock farms “with 500 Animal Units or more (equivalent to 1,250 hogs)” must have a Manure Management Plan. Iowa CCI members studied 234 of those plans in Adair, Boone, Dallas, Guthrie, and Sac counties (central and western Iowa). They found “missing documents, double-dumping, over-application, potential P-index violations, incorrect application rates, and potential hazards of manure application based on the geography and farming practices of the land.” Iowa CCI filed a complaint with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources today, requesting a thorough investigation of manure management plan violations as well as reforms “to improve oversight and to hold factory farm polluters accountable,” including stronger enforcement of plans and permits, “increased public access to manure application records,” more thorough inspections of livestock farms, and “better training across field offices for DNR staff.”

I enclose below the executive summary of Iowa CCI’s findings. The full complaint to the DNR is available here (pdf). Pages 4 through 6 offer detailed recommendations for “next steps” to address the problems. Appendix A lists 91 farms in the five counties that are large enough to need Manure Management Plans, but for which such plans are missing. Appendix B lists five farms for which Manure Management Plans were not in the DNR’s animal feeding operations database. Appendix C shows which documents were missing from dozens of farms’ Manure Management Plans across the counties. The file also includes county maps of watersheds and roads to show where the farms in question are located.

Since Iowa CCI members examined Manure Management Plans in only five of Iowa’s 99 counties, today’s case study reveals only a small fraction of statewide problems related to manure application. Kudos to those who researched and exposed the DNR’s failure to do its job.

Calls for tougher enforcement may be a dead letter, given the Branstad administration’s hostility to regulations that inconvenience business owners and the Iowa legislature’s resistance to approve even small measures to improve water quality (and I’m not just talking about Republican lawmakers).

Iowa CCI’s mission and methods have made it unpopular in powerful circles. But those who criticize the group’s controversial acts (like heckling politicians) should also acknowledge important work like today’s case study. While some Democratic elected officials are deeply committed to addressing our water pollution problem, as a group Iowa Democratic officialdom has said little and done less about agricultural runoff. Iowa CCI speaks for many people who are angry about pollution impairing hundreds of waterways, and who know that electing more Democrats alone will not solve the problem. That’s why it has long been among the largest non-profits working on environmental and social justice issues in this state.

Bruce Harreld officially begins work today as the University of Iowa’s 21st president. Speaking to the Iowa City Press-Citizen’s Jeff Charis-Carlson on October 30, Harreld promised to “fight, fight, fight for this institution”–a response to widespread fears that he would accede to the Iowa Board of Regents’ plan to shift funding away from the university.

In the same interview, Harreld revealed new details about how he was recruited for the presidency, undermining parts of an official narrative that had already shifted several times during the month of September.

Critics of the Board of Regents’ decision to hire the only finalist who had no base of support on campus are being told to stop complaining and give the new president a chance. I wish Harreld every success in his new job and hope to be proven wrong about what his tenure will mean for the university.

But this is no time to stop scrutinizing the hiring process and whether leaders of the search committee and the Board of Regents misled the public about their early contacts with Harreld. The University of Iowa is a public institution. The search for its new president cost taxpayers more than $308,000. Iowans have a right to know if the search committee‘s deliberations and finalists’ campus forums were merely a sham concealing the Regents’ intent to choose a hand-picked candidate.

Six months after the Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged that flawed testimony about hair analysis may have caused innocent people to be convicted of crimes, the State Public Defender’s office has created a new Wrongful Conviction Division “to determine whether similar errors have occurred in Iowa cases” and to “pursue available legal remedies.” I enclose below the press release announcing the new office, which will collaborate with Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the Innocence Project of Iowa, and the Midwest Innocence Project. People seeking to have their cases reviewed can submit this 12-page intake questionnaire (pdf).

State Public Defender Adam Gregg deserves credit for making this happen less than a year after Governor Terry Branstad appointed him to the job. (A former legislative liaison for Branstad, Gregg ran unsuccessfully for Iowa attorney general in 2014.) The press release indicates that Gregg repurposed a vacant position in his office using existing appropriations. Taking that route allowed him to move more quickly than if he had lobbied state lawmakers for funding to create a Wrongful Conviction Division. Gregg also hired a serious person to run the new division in Audrey McGinn, who spent four years as a staff attorney for the California Innocence Project. Scroll to the end of this post for more background on McGinn’s work.

Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reported from the October 26 press conference,

“What’s an acceptable error rate for our criminal justice system?” State Public Defender Adam Gregg asked this morning. “Even if we get it right 99 percent of the time and only get it wrong one percent of the time, that would mean there are over 80 innocent people currently incarcerated in Iowa prisons. And at what cost? To the state, it’s about $34,000 per year per inmate. But what about to their families, to their lives and to their sanity? And at what cost to public safety?”

Gregg said when the wrong person is convicted, that means the real criminal isn’t held accountable. The first batch of cases to be reviewed by this new division date back to the 1980s and early ’90s.

Criminal defense attorney Nick Sarcone commented to Bleeding Heartland, “I think this is an important step towards ensuring the integrity of our justice system. However, we need to spend more time, energy and money fixing the substantial issues which plague our system at the trial court level. We need to ensure this new unit is not investigating cases from 2015 in 2030.”

UPDATE: Added below criminal defense attorney Joseph Glazebrook’s reaction to this news.

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

Former State Senator Kent Sorenson testified this week in the trial of two former Ron Paul presidential campaign aides. (A judge dismissed charges against a third man who had been indicted in the same case.) After initially claiming to be the victim of a “straight-up political witch hunt,” Sorenson eventually pled guilty to federal charges related to accepting hidden payments. He had been negotiating with Paul’s operatives for months on a price for changing his allegiance from presidential candidate Michele Bachmann to Paul less than a week before the Iowa caucuses.

Russ Choma wrote up Sorenson’s testimony for Mother Jones, and Grant Rodgers has been covering the trial for the Des Moines Register. On Thursday, Sorenson testified that he was upset when some staffers for Michele Bachmann’s campaign treated him “like a leper,” after he revealed that he had considered switching to Paul and was offered money to do so. Dude, what did you expect? Asking to be paid for a presidential endorsement should get a person shunned from polite society. People with leprosy should take offense at being compared to a guy like you.

Sorenson said in court the next day that going into politics was “a waste of my life, and I wish I had not done it.” I would guess a large number of Iowans in both parties also wish he had never gotten involved with politics.

Ten days ago, Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal heard arguments in a case challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s veto of funding for two in-patient mental health facilities his administration decided to close earlier this year. In one exchange, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Thompson asserted that the governor could theoretically shut down the state’s court system by exercising his veto power to reject all appropriated funds for the judiciary. He noted that the constitution gives state lawmakers power to override a governor’s veto (through a two-thirds majority vote in both the Iowa House and Senate), and courts should not take on that role if legislators decline to do so.

I would like to hear attorneys’ opinions on whether the governor’s veto power extends so far. Can the governor eliminate virtually any part of state government by blocking appropriations for it, as long as at least one-third plus one member of one chamber of the legislature will back up his political agenda?

I’ve posted excerpts from these reports after the jump.

Among the many examples of corporate cronyism Governor Terry Branstad’s administration has provided these past five years, getting the Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance to rewrite tax code without legislative approval “on behalf of the Iowa Taxpayers Association” is among the most brazen.

Not only does this unprecedented use of the rule making process usurp legislative authority, it may end up being more expensive than “the worst economic development deal in state history.” At least tax incentives benefiting Orascom (for a fertilizer plant the company would have built anyway) have an end point. The Iowa Department of Revenue’s proposed sales tax cut for manufacturers will cost the state of Iowa tens of millions of dollars in revenue every year, indefinitely.

Democratic state lawmakers weren’t happy that the Branstad administration unilaterally decided to let private insurance companies manage the state’s Medicaid program, especially since some corporate representatives were briefed on that managed care plan long before state officials informed lawmakers or the general public. But state lawmakers didn’t have a way to block the Medicaid privatization.

In contrast, the Iowa House and Senate could stop the Iowa Department of Revenue’s proposed rule and thereby assert the authority of the legislative branch to approve tax code changes. Alas, signs from Tuesday’s meeting of the legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee (ARRC) point to House Republicans going along with the Branstad administration’s ”serious overreach of executive power.”

The Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance (IDORF) has proposed new administrative rules, effectively providing a tax cut worth tens of millions of dollars for Iowa manufacturers.  Absent a legislative response, the rule goes into effect January 1, 2016.

https://rules.iowa.gov/Notice/…

This is a serious overreach of executive power. The complexity of the issue, coupled with the unquenchable desire by the party in power to reduce taxes on business, provide the perfect climate to give a tax cut to manufacturers of some amount between $35 million to $80 million, perhaps more. This is an ongoing tax cut of increasing value. This action should be weighed against the Governor’s veto of $55.6 million of education funding….one-time education funding….because the State of Iowa ostensibly could not afford it.

And what is the stated purpose of this rule change? According to the notice, the rules are the “subject of a substantial confusion and controversy.” Furthermore, the change will eliminate “administratively burdensome distinctions…”

Periodically, a taxpayer will contest a ruling and win in court. When that happens, the Department provides a rule change that brings its practices in harmony with current law. That is not what is happening here. The Department is not losing cases in defense of the law. It simply finds the effort administratively burdensome.

How burdensome? The Department has identified 1,500 hours costing $85,000 that is required to enforce the Code of Iowa. That represents 0.24% of the revenue the Department claims to collect from this tax, and probably a lower percentage than that, for reasons discussed below. Interestingly, the Department’s budget is $17.8 million. They collect $8.4 billion in taxes. Their entire budget is 0.21% of each dollar collected. The Department should be commended for the efficiency with which it collects these complicated sales taxes owed by businesses to the State of Iowa.

A little historical context is in order. Generally speaking, manufacturers do not pay sales tax on machinery and equipment, supplies, and replacement parts that are part of the “value-added” process. Machinery and equipment was removed from the property tax roles in the late 1990s, a tax benefit of over $200 million, primarily to manufacturers. Most of this equipment is already exempt from sales tax. This latest administrative action continues the drip drip drip of the erosion of the tax base.

Normally, when the Governor wants to provide a tax cut to businesses or individuals, he makes a recommendation to the Legislature. The Senate and the House work out the details, and send a bill to the Governor to sign. That’s how it worked when they cut property taxes for commercial property owners by $200 million two years ago. That’s how it worked when they cut $200 million in property taxes for business in the late 1990s. That’s how it worked when they cut the sales tax on bailing twine, computers purchased by insurance companies with more than 50 employees, supplies purchased by greenhouses, or my personal favorite, the tax on sales of “tangible personal property sold to a nonprofit organization which was organized for the purpose of lending the tangible personal property to the general public for use by them for nonprofit purpose.”

The issues related to the tax itself are complicated. And the roles of the three branches of government in the execution of the sales tax are complicated as well. This combination makes it difficult to engage in a widespread public policy debate with anything beyond the soundbites. Soundbites, which in this case, are true. Namely, the Governor’s actions demonstrate that the State has enough money to give business a $365 million tax cut over the next ten years, but doesn’t have $55.6 million for schools, one time.

For those requiring a little more Inside Baseball, three factors need to be explored. First, do we really know how much this exemption will cost? Second, an explanation of why this rule is beyond the scope of the Department’s administrative authority. Third, a discussion of the process by which this rule will be implemented or overturned.

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

Even knowing how infrequently police officers are held accountable for shooting unarmed black people, I’m stunned two outside reviews determined it was “reasonable” for a Cleveland police officer to use deadly force against twelve-year-old Tamir Rice last year. You don’t have to study that case thoroughly to recognize that “officers rushed Tamir and shot him immediately without assessing the situation in the least.” Police fired twice at short range within seconds, then didn’t offer first aid to the boy who had been holding a pellet gun.

The Washington Post maintains the most complete database on fatal shootings by on-duty police officers, tracking such cases more thoroughly than the federal government. This week Kimberly Kindy published an outstanding investigative report for the Post about how often police departments refuse to release videos of fatal incidents, even though “officers investigated in fatal shootings are routinely given access to body camera footage.” I’ve posted excerpts below, but you should click through to read the whole article.

Kindy discussed at length the accidental shooting of Autumn Steele by a Burlington, Iowa police officer in January of this year, and the fight to gain access to video of the tragedy. Kindy found that of 760 fatal shootings by police across the country so far in 2015, 49 incidents were “captured by body camera,” but “Just 21 of those videos – less than half – have been publicly released. And in several of those cases, the footage, as in Burlington, was severely cut or otherwise edited.” State officials released only a 12-second excerpt from the body cam video of the Steele shooting. I’ve also posted below clips containing background on Steele’s death and her family’s battle with authorities trying to keep relevant information secret.

Public pressure to equip more on-duty police officers with body cams has mounted over the past year, but such programs incur much greater costs than simply purchasing the cameras, Brian Bakst and Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press in February. Departments must pay ongoing software and data storage fees.

“Everybody is screaming, ‘We need body cameras.’ But nobody is saying, where is the money coming from? What are you going to do with all the data? Who is going to manage it?” said Sgt. Jason Halifax of the Des Moines Police Department, which is struggling to identify a funding source for $300,000 to start a program. “Are we going to cut personnel? Are we going to increase taxes?”

One of the most shocking Iowa news stories I read this week appeared on the Ottumwa Evening Post website October 8. Pam Credille recounted how one night in June, a misread license plate led to a police pursuit that “should have never happened” under the Fairfield Police Department’s policy. Officers continued to pursue the car far beyond city limits (again violating department policy), and one officer was tempted to try to “box in” the fleeing vehicle (which would have been another violation). After the car spun into a ditch, Fairfield police officers ran toward it and fired several shots each. It’s just dumb luck neither of the unarmed teenagers inside were injured or killed. Credille’s story contains eight YouTube videos taken from police car dashboard camera footage before, during, and after the shooting incident. The officers involved were not disciplined; Fairfield Police Chief Dave Thomas told Credille, “I believe they responded appropriately and were safe and did a good job in defending themselves.” From what?

The Ottumwa Evening Post report reminded me of Tyler Comstock’s shooting death at the hands of an Ames police officer in November 2013. But in that incident, Comstock’s father initiated the police pursuit of his son by reporting his truck stolen after the 19-year-old took it without permission. As in the case of Autumn Steele, the county attorney determined the officer’s actions to be justified. Comstock’s family has since filed a wrongful death claim. UPDATE: Bleeding Heartland user rockm noted in the comments that the city of Ames settled with Comstock’s family “to avoid litigation.”

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

I spent most of Friday at the Iowa Environmental Council’s annual meeting, where as usual, I learned a lot from the conference speakers. (I’ve long been an active volunteer for the non-profit.) Chad Pregracke gave an inspiring and entertaining keynote address this year. Raised on the banks of the Mississippi River, Pregracke spent hours a day under its surface diving for mussels shells as a summer job. In his early 20s, he became obsessively committed to getting trash out of the river and cold-called businesses in the Quad Cities until he had enough funding for his first cleanup project. Favorable coverage from the Associated Press helped Pregracke raise more awareness and money. He later created the non-profit Living Lands and Waters, which has pulled a mind-blowing amount of trash out of waterways in twenty states. I am looking forward to reading Pregracke’s memoir From the Bottom Up: One Man’s Crusade to Clean America’s Rivers.

Several speakers at the Iowa Environmental Council conference discussed the Des Moines Water Works’ lawsuit against drainage districts in northwest Iowa’s Sac, Calhoun and Buena Vista Counties. The unprecedented lawsuit has angered many Iowa politicians, including Governor Terry Branstad, who has said the Water Works “ought to just tone it down and start cooperating and working with others […].” (Priceless response from Todd Dorman: “Tone it down? Tell it to the bloomin’ algae.”)

The most informative single piece I’ve seen about this litigation is Sixteen Things to Know About the Des Moines Water Works Proposed Lawsuit, a speech Drake University Law Professor Neil Hamilton gave at the 2015 Iowa Water Conference in Ames this March. The director of Drake’s Agricultural Law Center also wrote an excellent guest column for the Des Moines Register in May debunking the “strenuous effort” to convince Iowans that “the lawsuit is unfair and unhelpful.”

Last weekend, the Associated Press ran a series of well-researched articles on water infrastructure problems across the U.S. As a country, we were foolish not to invest more in infrastructure during and since the “Great Recession,” when interest rates have been at historically low levels. The AP reports underscore the mounting hidden and not-hidden costs of hundreds of municipalities deferring maintenance on water mains and equipment at treatment plants. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from several of the stories, but if you want to be educated and appalled, click through to read them in their entirety: Ryan Foley, “Drinking water systems imperiled by failing infrastructure” and “Millions remain unspent in federal water-system loan program”; Justin Pritchard, “Availability of clean water can’t be taken for granted anymore”; and John Seewer, “Cities bear rising cost of keeping water safe to drink.”

(Author note: Thanks to DesMoines Dem for permitting this cross-post originally published on Medium.) 

At its annual policy conference in August, the Iowa Corn Growers Association joined the Iowa Soybean Association in supporting Iowa’s Water and Land Legacy (IWLL), a sales tax increase that would provide in excess of $150 million annually to environmental protection and natural resources in Iowa.

Official support for IWLL from both the corn and soybean organizations is significant because a bill in this year’s legislative session to enact the tax increase, SSB1272 (succeeded by SF504), drew opposition from the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, the state’s agribusiness lobbying powerhouse.

While it received very little attention in the media, this action by the Corn Growers — just maybe — is a sign that something is changing in a good way for clean water in Iowa.

Even if not, at least the Corn Growers’ decision presents a good opportunity to look at what’s going on as Iowa struggles for better conservation performance of its globally significant soil and water resources.

BACKGROUND FOR THE BLEEDING HEARTLAND READER

Malcolm Price Laboratory School was a small K-12 school attached to and operated by the University of Northern Iowa.  MPLS was primarily used by the teacher education program to train teachers.  It was a critical part of UNI, “the teacher’s college”.  Year after year, however, with mounting budget pressures at UNI, talk would take place about closing MPLS.  Tired of this annual worry, supporters of MPLS through the help of their local legislatures, pushed for and obtained legislation creating the Iowa Research & Development School at MPLS.  This group thought the days of threats of closure were over since their existence was now statutory.  In 2012 they found out they were wrong.

In light of the recent events at the University of Iowa regarding the president selection process, I think it appropriate to share a narrative I drafted back in 2012 when UNI closed MPLS and other programs.  It was the fruit of an open records request for email.  The intended audience was the parents and supporters of MPLS.  

As if the “fix was in” camp needed any more ammunition: weeks before the nine members of the Iowa Board of Regents interviewed finalists to lead the University of Iowa, Board President Bruce Rastetter arranged for Bruce Harreld to meet with four other regents at the Ames office of Summit Agricultural Group. Rastetter is the CEO of that company. Earlier in July, he and three search committee members had met Harreld for lunch in Iowa City after Harreld spoke to senior staff at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, at the invitation of the search committee chair.

Follow me after the jump for more on today’s explosive revelations, as well as yesterday’s decision by a University of Iowa’s faculty group to censure Harreld “for his failure of professional ethics.”  

Iowa State University has announced a new position in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences focused on assessing the effectiveness of Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy – an all-voluntary state plan to reduce chronic runoff pollution that is the state's most vexing water quality challenge.

Think you might be up to the challenge?  There's more after the jump.

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

After the jump I’ve enclosed clips describing some brazen behavior. Many Iowans think of corruption in public procurement as a problem for other people, like our neighbors in Illinois. But a former Iowa Department of Public Safety employee’s involvement in state contracts awarded to Smith & Wesson raises red flags. I was surprised to learn on Friday that no ethics case will be pursued regarding the possible conflict of interest.

Todd Dorman’s latest column for the Cedar Rapids Gazette highlights comments by “America’s Longest Serving Ironist” (Governor Terry Branstad) about Syrian refugees possibly being resettled in Iowa. Dorman noted that “The master of blindside edicts” now wants “transparency” from the federal government.

His piece reminded me of Branstad’s hypocritical (or non-self-aware, if we’re being charitable) remarks to Clare McCarthy for her feature about refugees for IowaWatch.org. Speaking to McCarthy on July 7, the governor described how refugees from Burma need mentors from within their community to help them adjust to life in Iowa–perhaps forgetting that only days before, he had vetoed funding for a pilot program to train “leaders from the refugee community to help other refugees work through challenges.”

When it comes to political leaders shamelessly doing whatever they want, then failing to take responsibility, Branstad’s got nothing on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. desmoinesdem directed my attention to a classic anecdote about Putin pocketing a Superbowl ring belonging to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Karen Dawisha related the story in her 2014 book Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? Scroll to the end of this post to read the tale.

UPDATE: A reader commented that former State Representative Renee Schulte also committed a brazen act by shifting gears in a matter of days from being a contractor for the Iowa Department of Human Services to a consultant for a company bidding on contracts to manage Medicaid.

SECOND UPDATE: Not Iowa-specific, but certainly brazen in an “evil genius” way: a “a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager” bought the rights to a life-saving drug last month and “immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Andrew Pollack reported for the New York Times.  

Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal ruled yesterday that a lawsuit challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s line-item vetoes of mental health facility funding can move forward.

A group of Democratic state legislators and AFSCME, Iowa’s largest public employee union, filed the lawsuit in July. Last month, attorneys for the state filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit or force the plaintiffs to “recast” (revise and resubmit) their court filing.

But in a thirteen-page ruling, Judge Staskal rejected the state’s arguments that “the plaintiffs lack standing, have failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and that the case presents a nonjusticiable political question.” He found that AFSCME Iowa Council 61 President Danny Homan has standing because he represents the interests of state workers who were laid off when the state government closed in-patient mental health facilities in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant. The judge also noted that state legislators “have standing to challenge the propriety of the Governor’s exercise of his veto authority.” Judge Staskal found plaintiffs had stated a claim: “a challenge to the Governor’s exercise of his line-item veto authority.” As for the political question, the ruling noted, “Whether to close Clarinda and Mount Pleasant is a policy matter for the other branches of government. Whether the Governor’s particular use of his line-item veto power is constitutional is a matter for the courts.”

Judge Staskal did find in favor of one argument advanced by state attorneys, releasing Iowa Department of Human Services Director Chuck Palmer as a co-defendant: “The Director [Palmer] plainly has no authority to veto legislation and there is no allegation that he did veto legislation. Therefore, there is no conceivable set of facts upon which relief could be granted on the claim that the Director exercised an improper veto.”    

The legislators who joined this lawsuit are State Senators Rich Taylor, Tom Courtney, Janet Petersen, Tony Bisignano, Herman Quirmbach, and Dick Dearden, and State Representatives Bruce Hunter, Curt Hanson, Jerry Kearns, Mark Smith, Art Staed, Ako Abdul-Samad, Jo Oldson, Ruth Ann Gaines, Sharon Steckman, Todd Taylor, Mary Gaskill, Kirsten Running-Marquardt, Timi Brown-Powers, and Dave Jacoby.

This Sunday’s Des Moines Register carried another front-page story by Tony Leys about the substandard treatment some patients have received since being transferred from the now-closed state mental health facility in Clarinda. Leys reported last month that eight former Clarinda patients were sent to nursing homes “rated ‘below average’ or ‘much below average’ on a federal registry,” and that two of the patients “died shortly after their transfers.”

“Transfer trauma” can endanger a frail person’s health even if the new facility offers excellent care. Unfortunately, the Perry Health Care Center’s handling of three former Clarinda patients left much to be desired, according to an Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals report cited at length by Leys. Failure to monitor and care appropriately for one man led to severe dehydration and breathing problems, and eventually his hospitalization. The man died two weeks later. Staff carelessness caused a shower accident that broke a woman’s leg. A third woman did not receive a blood-clot prevention medication for six days in a row. Click through for many more depressing details. The whole 28-page inspector’s report is embedded at the bottom of the page. The company that owns the nursing home rejects the inspector’s findings and will appeal the fines, its manager told the Register.

From where I’m sitting, the nursing home is fortunate to face only $13,500 in fines for the long list of documented problems. I’m shocked that failure to administer a medication for six days, or to inform the prescribing physician that the patient had not received the drug, resulted in only a $500 fine (pages 24 and 25 of the report). Failing “to provide adequate supervision when transferring a resident from a shower chair,” leading to a broken leg, resulted in only a $5,000 fine (pages 16 to 23).  

Most stunning: the nursing home will receive only an $8,000 fine for repeated staff failures to properly assess or treat a man who was becoming lethargic and dehydrated. Nor did staff always provide supplemental oxygen as indicated when the man’s saturation levels dropped below 90 percent. The brother of the (now dead) man told Leys that a doctor at Mercy Medical Center “said she’d never seen a person so dehydrated in her life.”

Eight years ago, an Iowa nursing home received state and federal fines totaling $112,650 for failing to change a woman’s wound dressing for 25 days, resulting in gangrene and amputation of the affected leg. A settlement later reduced that fine to $75,397.

I don’t know how much discretion state inspectors have in assessing penalties. Iowa nursing homes can’t be fined at all for some of the most common health and safety violations, under a law Governor Chet Culver signed in 2009. The Iowa House and Senate had unanimously approved that bill, ignoring concerns raised by some advocacy groups, the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs, and the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals.

Leys reported that the woman who failed to receive her anti-clotting meds has moved “a more highly rated nursing home near Bloomfield, which specializes in treating elderly people with mental illnesses.” The woman whose leg was broken would like to move from the Perry facility but has no place to go.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has informed 56 Republican state legislators that his office has neither “jurisdiction over transfers of fetal tissue” nor the “authority to investigate or demand information about the transfer of fetal tissue.” In a letter dated today, Miller noted that “Iowa does not have any state laws governing the transfer of fetal tissue,” which means that only offices of U.S. Attorneys are able to enforce federal laws in this area.

Last month, the GOP lawmakers asked Miller’s office “to investigate current and planned abortion operations within Iowa to ensure compliance with the law.” Their letter set out ten detailed questions regarding the disposal, donation, or possible sale of body parts following abortions. Miller directed the legislators to contact U.S. attorneys’ offices in Iowa if they “have reliable information that federal laws relating to fetal tissue are being violated.”

I enclose below the August 24 letter from Iowa House and Senate Republicans, today’s written response from Miller, and a two-page letter Planned Parenthood of the Heartland provided to the Attorney General’s Office regarding the lawmakers’ query. Planned Parenthood’s response noted that the organization “does not now, and has not in the past, participated in” any fetal tissue donation programs but adheres to “rigorous standards of care” and “compliance with all applicable laws and regulations” in every area of its work, including abortion services.

Many Iowa Republicans will be furious, not only because Miller will not act on their unfounded suspicions, but also because the Attorney General’s Office responded to their query in what appears to be a textbook late-afternoon, pre-holiday-weekend news dump.

Also worth noting: Iowa House Speaker-select Linda Upmeyer and incoming House Majority Leader Chris Hagenow did not sign the August 24 letter to Miller, but House Speaker Pro-Tem Matt Windschitl, incoming Majority Whip Joel Fry, and Assistant Majority Leaders Zach Nunn, Jarad Klein, and Walt Rogers did. Iowa Senate Minority Leader Bill Dix did not sign the letter, but Minority Whip Jack Whitver and Assistant Minority Leaders Rick Bertrand, Randy Fenestra, Charles Schneider, and David Johnson did.

By a unanimous vote, the Iowa Board of Regents today named J. Bruce Harreld as the next president of the University of Iowa. Of the four finalists for the job, only Harreld had never worked in academic administration. Up to now, his experience at universities has been limited to some adjunct teaching.

I’m going on record now: this experiment will not end well.

Two months after the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled unconstitutional a proposed state ban on using telemedicine for abortions, the Iowa Board of Medicine and Governor Terry Branstad are at last ready to accept the court ruling as the final word on the subject.  

Governor Terry Branstad didn’t run for re-election last year on a plan to let private insurance companies manage health care for some 560,000 Iowans on Medicaid. He didn’t work with key state legislators to draw up his administration’s “Medicaid Modernization” plans. The governor’s draft budget, submitted in January, projected some $51 million in savings on Medicaid for the 2016 fiscal year. But key lawmakers like the chair of the Iowa Senate Health and Human Resources Appropriations subcommittee didn’t learn that four private companies would be selected to handle almost all Medicaid services until the Iowa Department of Human Services made its request for proposals public in February.

Recent accusations of bias and conflicts of interest, as well as allegedly inaccurate scoring of insurers’ proposals, have raised many questions about how the Iowa DHS selected the four companies now negotiating contracts to manage Medicaid for one-sixth of Iowans. Reports of campaign contributions by lobbyists and political action committees representing firms that sought Iowa’s Medicaid business prompted one watchdog to decry “pay to play” politics.

Those news stories point to a conclusion that isn’t getting enough attention: various insurance companies and their paid representatives knew what was coming down the pike long before the Branstad administration disclosed its plans to privatize Medicaid.

The Pella Electric Cooperative has told the Iowa Utilities Board it will no longer seek to charge some customers using solar panels a much higher “facilities fee,” Karen Uhlenhuth reported today for Midwest Energy News. The rural electric cooperative had informed members in June that customers installing new solar panels after August 15 would be charged a monthly fee of $85, which is $57.50 higher than what most of the Pella Electric customers pay. Those who had already installed solar systems would be exempt from the higher fee for five years, but would have to start paying it in 2020.

The cooperative’s action provoked an outcry from renewable energy advocates as well as from the handful of Pella Electric customers who would have been immediately affected. Uhlenhuth noted that the non-profit Environmental Law & Policy Center intervened with the Iowa Utilities Board, saying “a fee levied only on customers with distributed generation facilities ran counter to two provisions in Iowa law.” The Office of Consumer Advocate (part of the Iowa Attorney General’s office) asked the cooperative to provide data supporting a much higher monthly fee for solar users. The cooperative had refused to release its “cost of service” study last month.

To all appearances, the coop backed down once leaders realized they were on shaky legal ground, much like Alliant Energy reversed its position on net metering for some solar projects, shortly after critics had intervened with the utilities board. Uhlenhuth quoted a statement released by the Pella cooperative, which sounds like an unconvincing attempt to save face. The coop’s chief executive officer John Smith claimed it is “incorrect” to depict the higher facilities fee as “discriminatory.” He is sticking to his story that charging solar users more was merely an effort to be “fair” to other customers. While not admitting that the cooperative was wrong, the statement said it is withdrawing the proposal “until such time that we can better educate our members and the community as to the fair and equitable recovery of fixed costs.”

A press release from the Environmental Law & Policy Center, which I enclose in full below, notes that the Pella cooperative already benefits from solar panels installed by its customers, because it “buys excess solar energy at a rock bottom price” of 3.3 cents per kilowatt-hour and “sells it at a premium” price of 10.1 cents per kWh. (I’m an active supporter of the ELPC, but I have no role in drafting their public statements or legal strategy.)

The Branstad administration has justified its “Medicaid Modernization Initiative” with optimistic projections about more “efficient, coordinated and high quality healthcare” and greater “accountability in health care coordination,” delivered at a savings to taxpayers.

Jason Clayworth shared a less encouraging perspective in the August 21 Des Moines Register: all four private insurance companies now negotiating contracts to manage Medicaid in Iowa have “faced serious charges of fraud or mismanagement” related to serving Medicaid recipients in other states. Some of those violations led to “hundreds of millions of dollars in fines” against the insurers.  

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has determined that spending $240,000 on criminal investigations of voter fraud in Iowa was an “allowable, allocable and reasonable” use of federal Help America Vote Act funds, Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press today. I enclose the commission’s two-page memorandum of August 13 after the jump (hat tip to Foley). A spokesman for the commission told the AP “he wasn’t aware of other states using HAVA funding for similar investigations.”

Former Secretary of State Matt Schultz made battling voter fraud a major theme of his four years in office. The full-time investigator, pulled from other work at the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigations, turned up a few examples of improper registration and voting but no evidence of any large-scale voter fraud problem. Democratic State Senator Tom Courtney was among the leading critics of Schultz’s use of HAVA funds for that purpose. In October 2012, he requested state and federal audits of the matter. Deputy State Auditor Warren Jenkins announced in December 2013 that his office’s review could not determine whether criminal investigations were a proper or improper use of HAVA funds. He advised the Secretary of State’s Office to “have a plan in place” in case Iowa needed to repay the money to the federal government later.

The commission’s ruling is a lucky break for Schultz, who was elected Madison County attorney last November after losing the GOP primary in the third Congressional district. He’s keeping busy now as state chair for Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. When Schultz seeks higher office again, he can claim he was vindicated in using federal funds to investigate fraud.

For those wondering why it took federal officials so long to consider Iowa’s use of HAVA money: because Senate Republicans refused to confirm President Barack Obama’s nominees, the Election Assistance Commission didn’t have the necessary quorum to take any official actions from 2010 until January of this year, when three new commissioners were sworn in. Senators had confirmed them during the December 2014 lame-duck session of Congress as part of a large bloc of nominees approved by unanimous consent.

UPDATE: Added below a statement from Courtney urging Secretary of State Paul Pate “to formally pledge not to use federal funds for any future voter purge effort” and to make clear “that Iowa is no longer one of the states where election officials use tax dollars to suppress voter turnout.”

SECOND UPDATE: Schultz told the AP, “This was always about improving the administration of elections.” Rita Bettis, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, called it “truly troublesome for our national democracy” that Schultz’s “model of voter intimidation can now be exported to other states ahead of the 2016 General Election.”

Thousands of Iowa children went back to school today, having enjoyed an extra week or two of vacation thanks to a new state law preventing K-12 school districts from beginning the academic year before August 23. In response to lobbying from the tourism industry, most state lawmakers and Governor Terry Branstad sought to block local school administrators from starting in early or mid-August. However, as economist Dave Swenson explained here, “there is no evidence that early start dates interfere in any meaningful sense with the Iowa State Fair or with any other tourism activity in Iowa.”

If only the governor and most of our state legislators were as tuned in to how dirty water hurts Iowa tourism.  

On Monday, the Iowa Department of Human Services announced the four private insurance companies selected to manage care for almost all of the 560,000 Iowans on Medicaid. Pending successful contract negotiations, Amerigroup Iowa, AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa, UnitedHealthcare Plan of the River Valley, and WellCare of Iowa will start managing care for Iowans on January 1, 2016. It’s too early to say how the change will affect medical services. Speaking to the Des Moines Register, Democratic State Senator Amanda Ragan expressed concern “that people will fall through the cracks” and said she hopes Iowans will contact state lawmakers “if problems develop” under the new system.

Some losers have emerged from the process already: namely, two companies now managing care for some Iowans on Medicaid, which were not selected to continue in that role next year. Follow me after the jump for background on the Medicaid privatization plan and the fallout from the Iowa DHS not choosing Magellan Health Inc and Meridian Health Plan as managed care organizations for 2016.  

Refugees from Burma (Myanmar) spend an average of 10-15 years in a refugee camp before coming to America. They get 3 days head’s up before coming to the United States. They take out a government loan of several thousand dollars that they must pay back just to get here. They are then assigned a caseworker from a resettlement agency. This agency and the refugee(s) have 90 days to learn a completely new language and culture, understand school systems, public transportation, healthcare – everything from Winter clothing to brushing their teeth. After 90 days, the federal government stops supporting the refugees all together. The resettlement agency, due to overwhelming demand, must be off to assist the next incoming family. So who takes over?

People like me.

One of Iowa’s major investor-owned utilities has changed a policy that was impeding new solar power projects, Karen Uhlenhuth reported for Midwest Energy News over the weekend. Follow me after the jump for background and details on this excellent news.

Midwest Energy News, a non-profit news website supported by non-profits focused on energy policy, is launching an award to recognize “emerging leaders throughout the region and their work to accelerate America’s transition to a clean energy economy.” The site will accept nominations for the “40 Under 40” designation here “until either 250 nominations are received or 10:00 p.m. CT on Monday, August 10.” Eligible candidates include “midwest-based leaders and innovators from all sectors -industry, government, regulatory, business, academic, and advocacy.”

I learned about the 40 Under 40 competition from State Representative Chuck Isenhart, who will serve on the selection advisory committee for Midwest Energy News. Isenhart is the ranking Democrat on the Iowa House Environmental Protection Committee and has been a strong voice in the Iowa legislature on a range of environmental issues.

Through volunteering for various non-profits, I have become acquainted with several Iowans who deserve serious consideration for the new award, and I plan to encourage their colleagues to nominate them. The candidate who immediately came to my mind, though, is someone I’ve never met. Paritosh Kasotia is the founder and CEO of Unfolding Energy, a non-profit “founded on a premise that clean energy choices can safeguard the climate as well as create economic growth.” She is best known as the highly capable former leader of the Iowa Energy Office; I enclose below more background on that part of her career. Late last year, leaders of the Iowa Economic Development Authority fired Kasotia for reasons never explained to anyone’s satisfaction. Some suspected the dismissal was related to a $1 million solar power grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which Kasotia helped land but Iowa eventually relinquished after Branstad administration officials “amended an original proposal and insisted the grant not be used to evaluate solar energy policies – a change that utility lobbyists sought,” Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press last July.

After nearly two years on the job, Matt Hinch is resigning as Governor Terry Branstad’s chief of staff, effective August 7. The full press release from the governor’s office is after the jump.

Hinch is leaving for an unspecified “private sector” opportunity. I expect to hear soon that he is joining one of the Republican presidential campaigns. Hinch’s previous work included a stint as campaign manager for then-U.S. Representative Tom Latham. He also served as chief of staff for Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen and handled government relations for the Greater Des Moines Partnership, an influential business-oriented group.

Hinch kept a low profile as the governor’s chief of staff, rarely making the news. Last year, he headed a quick (and I mean very quick) review of secret settlements with former state employees, which sidestepped allegations of political cronyism that affected the careers of some merit-based state workers. Former Iowa Workforce Development Director Teresa Wahlert has asserted that Hinch and other senior Branstad administration officials thwarted her efforts to make her department’s chief administrative law judge position a merit-based job, as the U.S. Department of Labor has demanded.

UPDATE: Another plausible theory: Hinch may go to work for the Iowa Partnership for Clean Water, an astroturf group the Iowa Farm Bureau created to lobby against any regulations to improve water quality.

Solar power made big news in Iowa today, as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke in Des Moines about ambitious goals for installing solar panels. In a forthcoming post, Bleeding Heartland will compare the Democratic presidential candidates’ proposals to combat climate change by increasing renewable energy production and decreasing carbon emissions.

Iowa has tremendous potential to generate electricity from the sun. Recognizing that fact, large bipartisan majorities in the Iowa House and Senate “triple[d] the size of Iowa’s successful solar tax incentive program” in 2014 and during this year’s session increased available solar energy tax incentive funds by another $500,000 to $5 million per year.

But some segments of the utilities sector have been slow to embrace solar power. One of Iowa’s major investor-owned utilities persuaded the Iowa Utilities Board to block certain financing arrangements that made it easier for customers to install solar panels. An appeal of that administrative decision went to the Iowa Supreme Court, which overturned the Iowa Utilities Board last year.

Rural electric cooperatives, which supply electricity to roughly 650,000 Iowans, have approached renewable energy and solar power in vastly different ways. Farmers Electric Cooperative in the Kalona area installed the largest solar farm in Iowa last year.  

But as first reported by Karen Uhlenhuth at Midwest Energy News last week, the Pella Electric Cooperative is seeking to penalize customers who choose to install new solar or other renewable technology. Lee Rood picked up the story on the front page of today’s Des Moines Register. The cooperative’s new monthly charge for a handful of consumers is brazen and probably illegal.  

Iowa’s largest public employee union and 20 Democratic state legislators filed a lawsuit today challenging the closure of mental health institutes in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda. I enclose below a press release from AFSCME Council 61, which lists the six state senators and fourteen state representatives who joined the lawsuit naming Governor Terry Branstad and Department of Human Services Director Chuck Palmer.

The Branstad administration announced plans in January to close two of Iowa’s four in-patient mental health facilities. State legislators were neither consulted nor notified in advance. The Department of Human Services started winding down operations well before the end of the 2015 fiscal year. Democrats fought to include funding for the Clarinda and Mount Pleasant institutes in the budget for the current fiscal year, but Branstad item-vetoed the appropriation. The lawsuit contends that closing the facilities violates Iowa Code, which holds that the state “shall operate” mental health institutes in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda. The governor’s communications director told KCCI that AFSCME’s leader in Iowa “is resistant to change” and that the closed “centers were not suited to offer modern mental health care.”

The Iowa legislature’s decision next year on whether to fund the Clarinda and Mount Pleasant facilities will be critically important. The Iowa Supreme Court recently dismissed the lawsuit challenging the closure of the Iowa Juvenile Home in 2014, without considering the merits of that case, on the grounds that the legislature made the issue “moot” by no longer appropriating state money to operate that facility. By refusing to include funding for the two closed mental health institutes in the budget for fiscal year 2017, Iowa House Republicans could bolster the Branstad administration’s efforts to defeat the lawsuit filed today.

UPDATE: Added more speculation about this lawsuit’s prospects below.

The apparent attempt to bury Governor Terry Branstad’s large batch of budget cuts before the July 4 holiday weekend isn’t working. Fallout from the governor’s line-item vetoes continues to make news on a daily basis. Today, Iowa Senate Democratic leaders announced that they have formally asked colleagues to request a special legislative session to override the highest-profile and largest vetoes, which affected education and mental health funding.

Meanwhile, the latest article by the Des Moines Register’s “Reader’s Watchdog” Lee Rood called attention to an item veto that flew below the radar last week: $100,000 from the health and human services budget, intended for a pilot project to serve refugees in Polk County. The amount of money was so small–far less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the $7 billion state budget–that Branstad couldn’t fall back on misleading statements about “fiscal health” to justify this item veto. Instead, he cited an equally weak pretext.

Late in the afternoon on the last day state offices were open before the long holiday weekend, Governor Terry Branstad used his veto pen to strike “all the big deals” Iowa House Republicans and Senate Democrats negotiated to end this year’s legislative session.

The budget compromise was already a much better deal for statehouse Republicans than for Democrats. House GOP leaders got the global budget targets they had demanded, which were lower than what the governor requested and Democrats proposed. Most of the concessions to Democrats came in House File 666, a $125 million collection of one-time appropriations.

While Branstad didn’t veto the entire supplemental spending bill like he did in 2014, he cut out House File 666’s largest and highest-priority items for statehouse Democrats: $55.7 million for K-12 school districts, $2.5 million for community colleges, nearly $2.9 million for the University of Iowa, $2.25 million for Iowa State University, and $1.1 million for the University of Northern Iowa.

In other words, after standing on the sidelines during most of the battle over the 2016 budget, Branstad handed House Republicans near-total victory. The fallout will be substantial.

Catching up on news from last week, Governor Terry Branstad appointed Ryan Wise to lead the Iowa Department of Education, effective July 1. I’ve enclosed below the full statement from the governor’s office, which includes more background on Wise. He should have no trouble during the Iowa Senate confirmation process, having served as deputy director at the education department since September 2013.

Wise replaces Brad Buck, who started work on July 1 as superintendent of the Cedar Rapids Community School District. It’s no surprise that he sought new opportunities after less than two years in the top state education job. Branstad instructed Buck to prioritize the tourism industry’s demands over the consensus of school district leaders on academic calendars, even though the large body of research supporting shorter summer vacations for students contrasts sharply with the lack of evidence that “early [school] start dates interfere in any meaningful sense with the Iowa State Fair or with any other tourism activity in Iowa.” During Buck’s tenure as education director, Branstad also asked lawmakers to approve miserly increases in state aid to K-12 schools. The governor’s latest draft budget included “allowable growth” for K-12 education of 1.25 percent for fiscal year 2016 and 2.45 percent for fiscal year 2017. Those levels are low by historical standards and not nearly enough to allow school districts to cover growing costs, leading to either staff and program cuts or property tax increases in many localities.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. UPDATE: Added below excerpts from fifth-grade teacher Amy Moore’s editorial for the Des Moines Register, sounding the alarm about Wise’s experience with the Teach for America program.

P.S.- Almost every time I read a press release from the governor’s office, I am struck by the relentless branding of Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds as a single unit. The communications staff have been doing this for years, supporting Branstad’s desire to make Reynolds his successor. Still, it’s jarring to read unnatural-sounding quotes mentioning the “governor and lieutenant governor” or “Governor Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Reynolds’ leadership.” Does anyone really talk the way Wise “speaks” in the enclosed press release (“I admire the Governor’s and Lieutenant Governor’s commitment to providing every child in Iowa with the world-class education they deserve”)?

Not for the first time and probably not for the last time, Governor Terry Branstad dropped a lot of line-item vetoes late in the afternoon before a holiday weekend. Early news reports are understandably focusing on the vetoes of one-time funding for K-12 education and state universities, as well as language that would have kept mental health institutions in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant open. Bleeding Heartland has a post in progress about the fallout from those actions and others, including Branstad’s decision to strike language that would have expanded child care assistance.

Democratic State Representative Sharon Steckman called attention to several other line-item vetoes that flew below the radar yesterday. One of them seems particularly important, as it could put the State of Iowa at odds with U.S. Department of Labor demands to “strengthen Iowa’s compliance with Federal law” and keep administrative law judges “free from actual or perceived intimidation.”

JULY 6 UPDATE: The vetoed language pertained to administrative law judges working for the Public Employment Relations Board, not Iowa Workforce Development; see further details below.

Nearly two weeks ago, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the state ban on using telemedicine for abortion. The unanimous decision is the end of the line for a rule the Iowa Board of Medicine adopted in the absence of medical evidence.

Yet Governor Terry Branstad isn’t the only person reluctant to take the Iowa Supreme Court’s no, no, no, no, no, no for an answer. Tony Leys reported for the Des Moines Register on Tuesday, “The Iowa Board of Medicine has huddled three times with its lawyers since losing a key state Supreme Court case this month, but has not yet decided whether to appeal or accept the decision.”

I don’t know what’s more surprising: that after three meetings, those attorneys still haven’t persuaded board members to quit while they’re behind, or that board members who didn’t participate in making the unconstitutional rule are considering hitching their wagons to this cause.