A report from Iowa State University shows retail sales in many large and small Iowa cities stabilized over the past fiscal year. Liesl Eathington, an assistant scientist in I-S-U’s Department of Economics, produced the annual analysis showing average per capita sales statewide grew by less than one-percent for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011. “That was a pretty big improvement over the prior year when the state, as a whole, saw a 6.5-percent drop in per capita sales,” Eathington says.

More than half of Iowa’s counties experienced growth in retail sales last year. Iowa’s large metropolitan areas accounted for 64-percent of the state’s taxable sales. Eathington says retail sales declined slightly (0.6%) in micropolitan areas – which include cities with 10,000 to 50,000 residents – cities like Fort Dodge, Storm Lake and Mason City. “We saw a lot of job losses in these communities and especially manufacturing jobs, which are the core of the economy in a lot of these mid-sized cities,” Eathington says. “So, the manufacturing and other job losses in these communities would ripple through…affecting the retail sales.” 

The analysis found some positive news for Iowa’s rural areas. The state’s 21 most rural counties posted a four-percent increase in retail sales last year. Eathington says it’s difficult to determine how much rising internet sales might be impacting Iowa’s retail sector. “To really get at how internet sales are affecting Iowa’s retailers, you’d really have to do some household level research – such as surveys to find out how (Iowans) are changing their spending habits,” Eathington says. “That’s just not something that we can figure out from the sales tax return data.”

 (Pat Curtis/Radio Iowa)

Links:

CITY:
http://www.recap.iastate.edu/retail/
COUNTY: http://www.recap.iastate.edu/retail/county.php

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) – A 46-year-old man Iowa man already sentenced for raping two women in Nebraska has pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual abuse in Iowa. The Omaha World-Herald reports Todd Mills made his pleas Wednesday in Council Bluffs.  Mills, of Shelby, originally was charged with four counts of kidnapping and sexually assaulting four women in Iowa from 2008 to June 2010.
 
On Wednesday he pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree sexual abuse. The newspaper says that under terms of the agreement with prosecutors, Mills will serve two terms of 25 years at the same time, then another 25-year term.
 
Mills was sentenced in Nebraska in September to up to 140 years in prison for sexually assaulting two women in Omaha.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) – Iowa’s bishops have asked Catholics to fast as a way to demonstrate their concerns over mandates in the federal health care law. Sioux City television station KTIV reports parishioners have been asked to fast on March 30 to highlight what the bishops call “ongoing religious liberty concerns.”  The bishops say in a letter that the law will force religious people and groups to violate their “most deeply held convictions.”  The federal policy requires nearly all employers to provide insurance coverage that includes free birth control for workers. Houses of worship are exempt; religiously affiliated charities, hospitals and schools are not.  Bishops and others consider the religious exemption too narrow. President Barack Obama has said insurance companies would pay for the coverage instead of religious employers.