(Red Oak, Iowa) – A traffic stop by Red Oak Police today (Tuesday) at around 1:36-a.m., resulted in the arrest of a man on warrants out of Missouri. Red Oak Police took 45-year-old Jason Richard Berendes, of Red Oak, into custody at Highway 48 and 222nd Street, on warrants out of Dallas County, MO., for: Domestic Assault-2nd degree/2nd offense-domestic assault-2nd degree/3rd offense; harassment – 1st degree/4th offense-4th degree-1st of 2nd offense/5th offense-domestic assault-4th degree-1st or 2nd offense.

Berendes was being held in the Montgomery County Jail while awaiting extradition to Missouri.

(Radio Iowa) – Ninety-five legislators have voted to put the brakes on a proposed casino in Cedar Rapids and the proposal is headed to Governor Kim Reynolds for her signature. The bill would create an immediate moratorium, to prevent the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission from considering any casino license applications over the next two years. Linn County voters approved a gambling referendum in November. Representative Kirsten Running-Marquardt of Cedar Rapids says that means her community is being singled out.

“This is incredibly unfair,” Running-Marquardt says. “People have been navigating and working with the Gaming Commission and then all of a sudden we see a moratorium pop up.” Representative Shannon Lundgren of Peosta says a moratorium on new state casino licenses is a good idea amid all the gambling activity happening in surrounding states. “It gives us an opportunity to look at what’s happening in our competitive states and then make a decision from there if we want to expand the land based casinos in the state,” Lundgren says.

Lundgren says legislators have a responsibility to ensure new casinos don’t siphon customers away from existing casinos — and she suggests lawmakers may set new limits on gambling regulators’ authority in the future. “I think this moratorium just allows us to step back and take a breather and see how we want to move forward — if we want to make any changes in how and why the commission would act going forward,” Lundgren says.

Representative Steve Hansen of Sioux City says as casino construction starts in Nebraska, a moratorium on new casinos in Iowa is short sighted. “The western Iowa casinos from Sioux City down to Council Bluffs, we will be impacted by Nebraska gambling, as will the whole state of Iowa,” Hansen says, “and I think we are going to end up wanting to increase licenses elsewhere in the state of Iowa to pick up that revenue that we’re going to lose.”

Senators considered and approved the moratorium for the first time Monday morning and the House approved it a few hours later. The bill that includes the moratorium on new casino licenses also would let Iowa casinos simulcast out-of-state horse races like the Kentucky Derby and take bets. An earlier version of the bill would have allowed Iowans to bet on video game competitions, but references to E-sports were removed from the bill.

(Radio Iowa) – A western Iowa legislator cast his final vote in the Iowa House, then announced late last (Monday) night that he was leaving for basic training for the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. Jon Jacobsen of Council Bluffs says members of the group are unpaid volunteers. “An enormous amount during my youth was involved in endurance swimming and aquatics lifesaving BSA activities. I was a preverbal fish who was always happiest on water,” Jacobsen says.

Jacobsen, who is 62, says for the past eight months he’s been getting fit and losing weight in order to qualify for basic training. He’s joining about 21-thousand other Americans who are volunteers in the Coast Guard Auxilary. Jacobsen says it will give him a new perspective on protecting Iowa’s waterways and flood prevention.

“Instead of serving my constituents in the House, I will be serving them on the Missouri and the Nishnabotna,” Jacobsen said. Jacobsen is not seeking reelection to the House, but is considering a run for the state senate in 2024. Jacobsen is an attorney and a trust officer in a bank.

(Radio Iowa) – Legislators will return to the state capitol today (Tuesday) to put the finishing touches on state spending plans for the budgeting year that begins July 1st. Republicans who hold majorities in the House and Senate have agreed to provide Iowa’s 15 area community colleges with six-and-a-half million dollars more for the next academic year. Republican Senator Chris Cournoyer of LeClaire says the three state universities will get a five-and-a-half million dollar boost.

“Which brings them up to $575 million in this budget,” Cournoyer says. And Cournoyer says that’s not a trivial amount. Democrats like Representative Cindy Winckler of Davenport say tuition at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa will have to go up, as state support of the universities today is less than it was in 2009.”It is unfortunate that we have such a backward view of our role in funding education in this state,” Winckler said.

Senator Herman Quirmbach, a Democrat from Ames, says the state universities are being starved. “To continue to bleed resources out of these universities is going to cause long term damage to this state,” Quirmbach says, “long beyond any of us in our tenure here in the Senate.” Representative David Kerr, a Republican from Morning Sun, says he fought with Senators to get as much as he could for scholarships for students planning to be teachers or mental health professionals, but wasn’t able to get as much as he had hoped in his final year as a legislator.

“What do I know? I’m just going to go home, turn the TV on and say: ‘What they heck did they do again?'” Kerr said. “…Why can’t certain things be done together?” As Radio Iowa reported on Monday, the governor’s plan to provide state scholarships to students in private k-through-12 schools has been tabled.