(Radio Iowa) – A House committee has approved a bill that would force landlords to give mobile home residents 90 days notice for rent and utility hikes, up for the current 60 days. The bill also includes some property tax relief, but the Iowa Manufactured Home Residents Network says after outrageous rent increases, the bill fails to limit future rent hikes or stop landlords from evicting them without citing a cause. Representative Lindsay James of Dubuque supports those additional moves.

“And I concur,” James says. “This is not enough.” But James says the bill is a small step forward, so she voted for it. Republican Representative Brian Lohse of Bondurant is the bill’s floor manager.

“I would’ve liked to have seen a lot more,” Lohse says, “but at this point this is the compromise that I could achieve in order to move the bill along.” The bill is now eligible for debate in the full House. Residents of mobile home parks began lobbying legislators for protections in 2019. Some said rent increases had been as high as 40 percent on the lots where their manufactured homes were placed years ago.

(Sidney, Iowa) – Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope reports a woman from Nebraska was arrested Tuesday evening, in connection with the theft of items from previously flooded properties. Deputies responded at around 5:48-p.m. to the 1300 block of Western Avenue, for a report of a suspicious person at a previously flooded residence. They located a suspect, 46-year-old Cynthia Unger, from Omaha.

Unger told the deputies she was collecting scrap metal from the flooded properties. She was then placed under arrest on a Class-C Felony charge of Theft 1st from a disaster affected building. Unger was being held at the Fremont County Jail on $10,000 bond.

The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office and Fremont County K9 Unit responded to the call.

(Radio Iowa) – Winnebago Industries celebrated a milestone today (Tuesday) that the company says makes it the first in the recreational vehicle industry to reach. Winnebago spokesperson Kelli Harms explains.  “We just produced the 500-thousandth motor home, and we were able to do a celebration with our employees and mark this significant occasion in our company’s history.” according to Harms.

The company got its start in Forest City making motorhomes and in recent years has expanded to many other products. This event was marked across all its facilities — including its North Iowa campus in Lake Mills, where the vehicle ceremoniously rolled off the production line. The record-setting motorhome is the popular Revel, a model introduced four years ago. “It’s a class B, four-by-four motorhome that really shows how Winnebago has grown and changed throughout the years — and we just thought it was a great vehicle to choose for our 500-thousandth motorhome,” she says.

Winnebago paused business across all facilities to allow every employee to join in the celebration — including the top ten-most senior employees who have been with the company for multiple decades and can remember some of the earliest vehicles. “It takes a true team to build our products. Our dealers see our products and they know that they are quality built products. It’s a great way to honor our employees for all the hard work they do every day to make these products come to life. Whether it’s engineering or ship out or stitchcraft, or in the offices — it’s truly a team that provides these products,” according to Harms.

The history on the company’s website says it began in 1958 as Modernistic Industries selling travel trailers, and then changed the name to Winnebago in 1960. The company produced its first motorhome in 1967 and went public in 1970. The company moved its corporate headquarters from Forest City to Eden Prairie, Minnesota in August of 2021.

(Radio Iowa) – The U.S. Senate has just voted to make next year’s switch to Daylight Saving Time PERMANENT. A bill to end the twice-a-year changing of clocks IN IOWA is moving through the state legislature, too. Senator Jeff Reichmann of Montrose is an ex-Marine who was stationed in Hawaii for five years.

“Hawaii is one of the states that does have Standard Time year round,” Reichman says. “I didn’t really like the fact that it got dark at eight o’clock at night. I like longer days. I’m kind of a summer person.” Under Daylight Saving Time, some summer sunsets are around nine o’clock. Reichman’s senate subcommittee has advanced a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent in Iowa — if congress approves.

Nineteen other states have passed similar laws, but state action will be unnecessary if the U.S. House passes the Senate’s “Sunshine Protection Act” and ends clock adjustments in the spring and fall.

(Radio Iowa) – Gasoline prices in Iowa dropped a few pennies a gallon in recent days, though the statewide average of three-90 a gallon is still a dollar-ten higher than a year ago. Julie Percival, an economist at the U-S Bureau of Labor Statistics, says it’s not completely fair to compare the current prices to last year. “It can be a little bit deceptive because the year previous to that, we actually had serious declines in gasoline prices, however, we’ve certainly more than made up from those losses from 2020,” Percival says.

“We have seen sustained increases in gasoline prices for most of the year.” Percival says it’s important to note that the fuel hikes are not just because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She says there’s no sign of any major relief in the near-record prices in Iowa. “There’s not really going to be much change unless we saw something that would cause people to be driving less or to be using less gas or something that would increase the supply of gas,” Percival says.

Triple-A says the average price in Iowa is three-90 a gallon, 12 cents below the all-time record of four-oh-eight set in July of 2008. The national average is four-31, down just two pennies from the record high — which was set last week.

(Radio Iowa) -A Clinton woman has pleaded guilty to not paying any taxes for the tree trimming business she ran. Forty-seven-year-old Penny Witt pleaded guilty to evading taxes for the business called Ultimate Tree Service and Spruces Tree Service. Witt admitted she took only cash, had no bank accounts, and paid her employees in cash, while not keeping any records for the business.

Witt admitted she knew she owed a substantial amount of federal taxes for 2016 and 2017 and that she willfully chose not to file tax returns. She is scheduled to be sentenced in June.

The Red Oak Police Department reports no injuries occurred during a two-vehicle accident on Tuesday. The accident happened at the intersection of Corning Street and Broadway in Red Oak.

It was determined that a 2008 Mercury Milan owned and operated by 64-year-old Mark Lelan Petersen of Red Oak was northbound and stopped at the red light at the intersection. A 2014 Ford F-150 operated by 46-year-old Andrea Kay Swank of Shenandoah did not see the Petersen vehicle stopped and struck the rear of the Mercury.

Damage to the Mercury was estimated at $2,000 and damage to the Ford was estimated at $3,000. Swank was cited for following too close.