Pipes intended for use in the Dakota Access pipeline being stored in Jasper County, Iowa during 2015. Photo provided by Wallace Taylor, used with permission.

UPDATE: As expected, the board voted unanimously to approve the permit. Scroll to the end of this post for more details and reaction.

The Iowa Utilities Board will meet this afternoon to issue a decision on the proposed Dakota Access pipeline. Everyone I know in the environmental community expects the three board members to approve the permit for this project, better known as the Bakken pipeline. Litigation is sure to follow, as opponents charge the Iowa Utilities Board’s eminent domain powers may be used only in the service of a “public good,” not “to privilege a private corporation.”

Other legal hurdles include the need for a permit from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, because the pipeline route would cross “four areas in Iowa that have been identified as sovereign lands.” The Sierra Club Iowa chapter has been pushing for a thorough Environmental Impact Study and archaeological review. (Too many Iowa politicians from both parties signed a letter to the utilities board opposing an independent environmental impact assessment.)

Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson has long cast doubt on the “bloated” economic impact numbers Dakota Access has used to market the project. Click here for Swenson’s detailed analysis on the pipeline’s “purported economic and fiscal benefits to the state of Iowa.”

A growing number of observers believe the project no longer makes economic sense even for Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Dakota Access.

Maridith Morris is a nurse and the Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 39. -promoted by desmoinesdem

This picture is my nephew Fin. He is an adorable, happy little guy and I love him to pieces. Fin has autism spectrum disorder. Fin is just one vulnerable Iowan who is going to be hurt by Medicaid privatization.

At Fin’s age, early intervention therapy is crucial for his positive outcomes. Therapy can mean the difference between him becoming a high functioning adult, one who is able to live independently, work, and pay taxes and a disabled adult needing tax payer support. Despite the crucial nature of Fin’s therapy, the rush to privatize Iowa’s Medicaid puts those services in jeopardy. To receive therapy, Fin’s parents will have to transport him from Indianola to appointments at Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines because services are no longer in network in Indianola.

Paritosh Kasotia is the founder and CEO of Unfolding Energy and was named to the Midwest Energy News list of “40 under 40” last year. She led the Iowa Energy Office until late 2014. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Unfolding Energy, a not-for-profit organization released its Iowa Energy Assessment and Planning for a Cleaner Future Report. The report is intended for the State of Iowa, elected officials, Iowans, and potential political candidates as a resource to guide the Iowa Energy Office’s planning process as they work towards creating a statewide energy plan.

The report provides an overview of Iowa’s energy production and consumption patterns and dives into Iowa’s current regulatory and policy framework in the context of climate change, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and building codes. Other sections of the report examines the potential for various clean energy sources and concludes the report with recommendations that the State of Iowa should implement.

Excerpt from the report below

Dave Swenson

Is it extortion when one party pays up even though it was never threatened?

Recently, the state of Iowa awarded $17 million in state assistance to Dow-DuPont for pledging to keep its Pioneer-related research and development activities in Johnston. In a Des Moines Register interview of Tina Hoffman, a spokesperson for the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA), we were told they were sure “Pioneer wasn’t going to up and close down shop. That was clear from the beginning ….” Still, the state is spinning this to be all about job retention.

Except it wasn’t.

Iowa’s Medicaid program will shift to managed care for some 560,000 recipients on April 1, in accordance with waivers granted by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS had previously denied the request from Governor Terry Branstad’s administration to privatize Medicaid by January 1, citing numerous signs that the state was not ready. In a letter the Branstad administration released today, Vikki Wachino of CMS noted “significant improvement” in several areas: the provider networks of three insurance companies picked to manage care for Medicaid recipients; plans for reimbursing out-of-network providers for services; better communication between state officials and Medicaid providers and recipients; and training of case managers to assist Medicaid beneficiaries during the transition.

I enclose below reaction to today’s news from the governor, key state lawmakers, and other stakeholders, as well as the full five-page letter from CMS to Mikki Stier, director for Medicaid in the Iowa Department of Human Services. Federal officials set several conditions on their approval of Iowa’s plans, such as monitoring the actions of the three managed-care organizations, making sure call centers are running their helplines competently, and preserving some “continuity of care” for Medicaid recipients.

Although the delay until April 1 will allow more time to prepare for the transition, the policy’s likely impact remains the same: more money for insurance company overhead and profit and less for health care services; a deterioration in care for disabled people, as seen in Kansas and other states; and less access to health care providers (a key issue for the three Iowa Senate Republicans who recently voted with Democrats to terminate Medicaid privatization).

Senate Democrats continue to push for “tough, bipartisan oversight and accountability protections.” Chelsea Keenan reported for the Cedar Rapids Gazette that the Senate Human Resources Committee will consider that bill (Senate File 2213) on February 24. I don’t expect that legislation to go anywhere. All I’ve heard from Iowa House Republicans is happy talk, backed up by no evidence, that privatizing Medicaid will save the state money and improve patient care.

One of the four companies the Iowa Department of Human Services initially selected to manage care for Medicaid recipients has given up the fight to keep a contract that would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Follow me after the jump for details on the final stages of WellCare’s unsuccessful effort to overturn state officials’ decision to terminate that contract.

Hoping to improve on my percentages from last year, I offer sixteen Iowa politics predictions for 2016. Please spin your own scenarios in this thread.

I finally gave up on trying to predict whether Governor Terry Branstad will still be in office at the end of the year. Although his close adviser David Roederer “emphatically” says Branstad will serve out his sixth term, I am convinced the governor will resign early. But I can’t decide whether that will happen shortly after the November 2016 election or shortly after the Iowa legislature’s 2017 session.

When politicians lie, opponents often echo longtime Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous words: You’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.

Politicians can get away with deception, however, when journalists present conflicting facts as opposing viewpoints in a “he said/she said” frame. So it was when Governor Terry Branstad recently touted phony job creation numbers, and reputable Iowa journalists hid behind “critics say” rather than acknowledging reality: no serious economist would recognize those statistics.

And so it was when the Des Moines Register again covered the Iowa Department of Revenue’s unprecedented attempt to rewrite tax code through the rule-making process. Statehouse reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel’s attention to the topic is welcome. The rule change has been an under-reported Iowa politics story this fall, even though it could have a huge impact on the state budget in coming years. Unfortunately, as was the case in earlier articles for the Register on the same controversy, Pfannenstiel avoided stating some important truths about the Branstad administration’s efforts, attributing such observations to “others” including “Democratic lawmakers.”

The journalist’s reflex to appear impartial by presenting factual statements as partisan opinions is part of what media critic Jay Rosen has called the View from Nowhere.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, writing is a labor of love for me. Some posts are much more labor-intensive than others.

All of the pieces linked below took at least a couple of days to put together. Some were in progress for weeks before I was ready to hit the publish button. (No editor, deadlines, or word limits can be a dangerous combination.) A few of the particularly time-consuming posts required additional research or interviews. More often, the challenge was figuring out the best way to present the material.

Several pieces that would have qualified for this list are not included, because they are still unfinished. Assuming I can get those posts where they need to be, I plan to publish them during the first quarter of 2016.

While working on another piece about Iowa politics highlights from the year, I decided to start a new Bleeding Heartland tradition. Writing is a labor of love for me, as for many bloggers, but let’s face it: not all posts are equally lovable.

The most important political events can be frustrating or maddening to write up, especially when there is so much ground to cover.

Any blogger will confirm that posts attracting the most readers are not necessarily the author’s favorites. The highest-traffic Bleeding Heartland post of 2015–in fact, the highest-traffic post in this blog’s history–was just another detailed account of a message-testing opinion poll, like many that came before. Word to the wise: if you want a link from the Drudge Report, it helps to type up a bunch of negative statements about Hillary Clinton.

Sometimes, committing to a topic leads to a long, hard slog. I spent more time on this critique of political coverage at the Des Moines Register than on any other piece of writing I’ve done in the last decade. But honestly, the task was more depressing than enjoyable.

Other pieces were pure pleasure. Follow me after the jump for my top fifteen from 2015.

“Phony number” graphic created by Dave Swenson

I was encouraged when Beth Townsend became Iowa Workforce Development director early this year. The previous director, Teresa Wahlert, was one of Governor Terry Branstad’s worst appointees; I suspect her record for legal entanglements involving an agency director for the State of Iowa will never be surpassed. In contrast, I’d heard consistently good feedback about Townsend’s work as executive director of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. The new director has taken several steps to bring Iowa Workforce Development’s operations in line with federal labor laws.

Which makes it even more disappointing to see Townsend sell one of the biggest lies of Branstad’s long, long stint as governor, first in her agency’s annual budget presentation, and now in the editorial pages of Iowa’s largest newspapers.

They were so close. Florida-based WellCare played the game almost perfectly to win a contract for its Iowa subsidiary to manage care for Medicaid recipients, which could have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the next three years.

The first sign that WellCare’s ambitions might come to nothing attracted little notice, appearing just before the long Thanksgiving weekend. More bad tidings for WellCare arrived yesterday in a late Friday afternoon dump, the classic way for government officials to bury news. Reading Jason Clayworth’s report for the Des Moines Register, it’s easy to see why the Branstad administration sought minimal attention for fixing an embarrassing oversight.

For months, Governor Terry Branstad has dismissed warnings from patients, advocates, doctors, hospitals, editorial boards, and lawmakers that the state’s rush to privatize Medicaid would disrupt health care for some 560,000 Iowans. Today the governor finally got the message in a form he can’t ignore. Director Vikki Wachino of the federal government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wrote to Iowa Medicaid Director Mikki Stier,

Based on our review last week of Iowa’s progress, as well as the information you have provided, CMS expects that we will ultimately be able to approve Iowa’s managed care waivers. However, we do not believe that Iowa is ready to make this transition Jan. 1. CMS previously outlined the requirements to provide high quality, accessible care to Medicaid beneficiaries, and Iowa has not yet met those requirements, meaning that a transition on January 1 would risk serious disruptions in care for Medicaid beneficiaries. While you have made progress in some areas of readiness, our review also identified significant gaps that need to be addressed before CMS can authorize your waiver requests. For that reason, CMS will work with you toward approval of your request effective March 1, 2016, provided that the state demonstrates progress toward readiness consistent with the actions in the attachment to this letter.

Click through to read the full four-page letter and four-page attachment from Wachino to Stier, which the Des Moines Register posted online. CMS officials found that “significant areas of the state did not have many provider types within a reasonable distance,” and that “Relying too heavily on out-of-network providers is likely to create confusion among beneficiaries and providers, result in access issues for beneficiaries, and disrupt continuity of care for beneficiaries.” Many of the points raised echo concerns three Democratic state senators expressed during meetings with CMS officials in Washington last month.

The CMS readiness review also showed that nearly half of Medicaid recipients who tried to call the state’s call centers earlier this month could not get through. Many Iowans who did reach a staffer on the phone were not able to find out whether any of their current doctors had signed contracts with the four managed care providers approved to run Medicaid. The CMS findings are consistent with what I’ve been hearing from acquaintances: the enrollment packets sent to Medicaid recipients did not include basic details they would need to make an informed choice of managed care provider (such as where their family’s current doctors will be in-network).

I enclose below reaction to today’s news from Branstad, who struck an upbeat tone, and key Democratic lawmakers, who vowed to keep fighting to improve legislative oversight of the Medicaid privatization. The Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate approved such a bill during the 2015 session, but the Republican-controlled Iowa House declined to take it up. Oversight is the very least state lawmakers could do to prevent the transition to managed care from becoming a pretext for denying services to vulnerable Iowans.

David Pitt noted in his report for the Associated Press,

Two legal challenges continue including one from the Iowa Hospital Association, a trade group for the state’s hospitals. It sued the state claiming the privatization plan is illegal because it takes millions of dollars from a dedicated hospital trust fund and gives it to the four managed care companies.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. I am grateful that so many Iowans took the time to contact federal officials about Branstad’s disastrous policy. Bleeding Heartland reader Rhonda Shouse has been one of the superstar organizers in that fight.

UPDATE: Added below reaction from Representative Dave Loebsack (D, IA-02). I expect that during next year’s re-election campaign, Loebsack will highlight his efforts to shield constituents from the negative consequences of shifting Medicaid to managed care. His only declared Republican opponent is State Senator Mark Chelgren, who like his GOP colleagues in the upper chamber has done nothing to slow down the privatization or strengthen legislative oversight of the process.

SECOND UPDATE: Added more news and commentary related to this issue.

December 14 marked 7,642 days that Terry Branstad has been governor of Iowa, making him the longest-serving governor in U.S. history, according to Eric Ostermeier of the Smart Politics website. Because most states have term limits for governors, “The odds of anyone passing [Branstad] in the 21st Century are next to none,” Ostermeier told Catherine Lucey of the Associated Press.

Speaking about his legacy, Branstad has emphasized the diversification of Iowa’s economy, even though a governor has far less influence over such trends than Branstad seems to believe. Some have cited “fiscal conservatism” as a hallmark of Branstad’s leadership. I strongly disagree. The man who has been governor for nearly half of my lifetime is stingy about spending money on education and some other critical public services. He opposes bonding initiatives commonly used in other states to fund infrastructure projects (“you don’t borrow your way to prosperity”). But he is happy to provide tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to corporations that don’t need the help, without any regard for the future impact of those tax expenditures on the state budget. Many of Iowa’s “giveaways” in the name of economic development will never pay for themselves.

Branstad’s governing style has changed Iowa in important ways. He has altered Iowans’ expectations for their governor. He has expanded executive power at the expense of both the legislative branch and local governments. And particularly during the last five years, he has given corporate interests and business leaders more control over state policy. More thoughts on those points are after the jump, along with excerpts from some of the many profiles and interviews published as today’s landmark approached.

P.S.- Speaking of Branstad doing what business elites want him to do, Iowa Public Television’s “Governor Branstad: Behind the Scenes” program, which aired on December 11, included a telling snippet that I’ve transcribed below. During a brief chat at the Iowa State Fair, Iowa Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter asked Branstad to call Bruce Harreld, at that time one of the candidates to be president of the University of Iowa. That Rastetter asked Branstad to reassure Harreld was first reported right after the Board of Regents hired the new president, but I didn’t know they had the conversation in public near a television camera.

P.P.S.-Now that Branstad has made the history books, I remain convinced that he will not serve out his sixth term. Sometime between November 2016 and July 2017, he will resign in order to allow Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds to run for governor in 2018 as the incumbent. Although Branstad clearly loves his job, he is highly motivated to make Reynolds the next governor. She lacks a strong base of support in the Republican Party, because she was relatively inexperienced and largely unknown when tapped to be Branstad’s running mate in 2010. Even assuming she is the incumbent, Reynolds strikes me as more likely to lose than to win a statewide gubernatorial primary. Remaining in Branstad’s shadow would give Reynolds little chance of topping a field that will probably include Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey.

P.P.S.S.-I will always believe Branstad could have been beaten in 1990, if Democrats had nominated a stronger candidate than Don Avenson. Attorney General Tom Miller lost that three-way primary for one reason only: he was against abortion rights. Miller later changed that stance but never again ran for higher office.

In the spirit of the Russian proverb “Trust, but verify,” I checked last week to see whether funding the Iowa Utilities Board promised before Thanksgiving to release had reached energy centers housed at Iowa’s state universities.

Good news: the Iowa Energy Center at Iowa State University and the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa have both received all of the remittances the IUB collected on their behalf from gas and electric utilities. The centers do not appear to have in hand all of the interest payments to which they are entitled under Iowa Code, but IUB spokesperson Don Tormey assured me the agency “will forward the additional interest funds” to the energy centers, if any more interest accrues.

Strange news: the IUB chose an unusual way to send this year’s funding to the energy centers, and I don’t fully understand why. I’ve enclosed what I learned below, along with details on the money sent to the Iowa Energy Center and the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research so far, and what may yet be owed to them.

The Iowa Board of Regents voted unanimously on Wednesday to rename the University of Iowa’s Children’s Hospital the “Stead Family University of Iowa Children’s Hospital,” to honor contributions made by alumni Jerre and Mary Joy Stead.

The regents sought no public comment on the proposal, which was unveiled with the bare minimum of advance notice required under Iowa’s open meeting law.

They also “had no discussion on the name change” before voting to approve it, Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press.

The Steads deserve recognition for supporting a children’s hospital where countless Iowans have received life-saving care. Many people with comparable wealth are far less generous. The university acknowledged the Steads’ $20 million commitment to the hospital by naming the Pediatrics Department after the donors and fundraising campaign co-chairs in 2013.

By rubber-stamping the university’s request to rename the hospital, the Board of Regents failed to consider the opportunity cost of giving up naming rights for a nearly century-old institution in exchange for an additional $5 million pledge from the Steads.

The optics of renaming the hospital without public input are also bad, coming so soon after the regents’ pick of Bruce Harreld as president of the university. Not only has Jerre Stead had longstanding business relationships with Harreld, he and university Vice President for Medical Affairs Jean Robillard and Regents President Bruce Rastetter strongly influenced Harreld’s hiring.

Jon Neiderbach announced on Facebook today that he has decided not to run in Iowa House district 43: “We desperately need to fight hard to fix Iowa government, but I came to the conclusion that this wasn’t the best way for me to help make that happen.” He added that he “strongly” endorses fellow Democrat Jennifer Konfrst, “a wonderful candidate with strong connections to HD 43,” and will volunteer for her campaign. Neiderbach was the Democratic candidate for state auditor in 2014 and launched his bid for the Iowa House this September.

Incoming Iowa House Majority Leader Hagenow will be favored to win a fifth term here. His campaign will have virtually unlimited financial resources, and for decades, voters in this part of the Des Moines suburbs have elected Republicans to the state legislature. However, Hagenow is far more conservative than most of those predecessors. In addition, as Bleeding Heartland has noted before, Hagenow won re-election by fewer than two dozen votes in the last presidential election cycle, after Republicans spent heavily on negative tv ads that Democrats left unanswered. He won by fewer than 100 votes in 2008.

House district 43 leans slightly to the GOP on paper, with 6,673 active registered Democrats, 7,416 Republicans, and 5,981 no-party voters, according to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. President Barack Obama outpolled Mitt Romney in these precincts by 50.6 percent to 48.3 percent, smaller than his statewide winning margin. Then again, Joni Ernst beat Bruce Braley by only 2 percent in HD-43, a lot less than her 8-point victory in the 2014 U.S. Senate race.

Any comments about potentially competitive Iowa House races are welcome in this thread. I enclose below a map of House district 43. Click here for background on Konfrst, who is on the web at JenniferKonfrst.com as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

Final note: few Iowans in either party know more about the inner workings of state government than Neiderbach, who worked in the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau for fourteen years and as a management analyst for the Iowa Department of Human Services for fifteen years after that. He would be a valuable asset to any Democrat’s efforts to improve state budgeting and operations.

The Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) announced yesterday that it “has started the process to transfer funds earmarked for the Iowa Energy Center (IEC) at Iowa State University and the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) at the University of Iowa.” The retreat came less than a week after a spokesperson had insisted, “The board will disburse the funds when they are satisfied (the centers) have answered all the board’s questions.”

Restoring the flow of money means the centers charged with promoting alternative energy and efficiency and “interdisciplinary research on the many aspects of global environmental change” no longer face possible staff layoffs or program cuts. But yesterday’s climb-down won’t erase the damage done by IUB Chair Geri Huser’s unwise and unprecedented decision to withhold funding, in the absence of any legal authority to do so. She miscalculated in three ways.

In an unprecedented and “perhaps illegal” step, Iowa Utilities Board Chair Geri Huser is “withholding funding from the state’s renewable energy research center until its leaders satisfy her questions about its programs and finances,” Ryan Foley reported today for the Associated Press.

Huser’s overreach reflects a serious misunderstanding of her role as a member of the Iowa Energy Center’s advisory council. Her power play also raises questions about why Huser would go to such extraordinary lengths to disrupt activities at a center that has been promoting energy efficiency, conservation, and renewable technologies for nearly 25 years.

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.