(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says the economic stimulus package will be a campaign issue for Republicans in 2022 even though it means many people are getting checks. Ernst says there are many people who think the relief should have been more targeted.  “They come to me. I heard even over the weekend when I was out doing county tours folks saying ‘you know I really don’t need this 14-hundred dollars payment, what do I do with it?,” Ernst says. “So you do have people who have been working and they don’t understand, why I’m getting a payment.”

Ernst says the euphoria of getting the checks will eventually wear off when people realize the long-term cost. “At some point in the future, very near future, we do expect that the Democrats to pay for all of this will end up raising taxes — and that will be extremely unpopular — for all the goodies that were handed out in this package,” according to Ernst. She says she’s also heard from government leaders who don’t like the bailouts in the bill for poorly run states and cities.

“That have said, hey we had to tighten belts during COVID, we did the right thing, we balanced our city’s budget, and now our taxpayers’ dollars are going to go to the city of Chicago or the state of Illinois,” Ernst says. Ernst says the enthusiasm seen as the payments start arriving this week will subside when people realize the real cost of the bill. “When all of that other stuff comes to light — that’s when it becomes extremely unpopular. And we have seen this in previous administrations too, if you go back to times when previous economic stimulus plans were used,” Ernst says.

The relief bill was pushed through by Democrats without any votes from Republicans. Ernst made her comments in a call with Iowa reporters.

(Radio Iowa) – A bill that’s making its way through the legislature could expand the number of people eligible to serve as substitute teachers in Iowa. It would let the Iowa Board of Education Examiners authorize people to be substitute teachers if the person has earned as associates degree or completed at least 60 credit hours as an undergraduate. These AUTHORIZED substitutes would be limited to 10 days per month, while LICENSED substitutes have no such restriction. Representative Garrett Gobble, a social studies teacher in Ankeny, says if this bill had been law when he was a student, he would have had the chance to substitute.

“This bill will allow the next generation of teachers to have the opportunity to experience the classroom and develop into the teacher they want to be in a real world experience,” Gobble says. The bill would make permanent a provision in the governor’s public health emergency proclamation that was designed to help schools find substitute teachers during the pandemic. Margaret Buckton is a lobbyist of the Rural School Advocates of Iowa and the Urban Education Network. She says because of the governor’s emergency order, schools were able to find substitutes who hadn’t considered teaching before.

“So it was great to use that as not just fulfilling that need, but also recruiting new professionals to the classroom,” Buckton says. Senator Tim Goodwin of Burlington is a former teacher, coach and school administrator in southeast Iowa. “(The) teacher sub shortage has been around for quite some time and I can remember where it went from having to have teacher licensure to then a bachelor’s degree and now what’s being proposed now,” he says, “and so any way that we can help bridge that gap, I’m going to be in support of.”

The bill has no registered opposition. It has just cleared a Senate subcommittee and the full House approved it unanimously earlier this month.

(Radio Iowa) – A University of Iowa study finds things you post on social media could prevent you from getting your dream job, even though it’s a fuzzy, gray area for potential employers to be scouring your online accounts. Chad Van Iddekinge, U-I professor of management and entrepreneurship, says they reviewed the Facebook pages of 140 job applicants and compared it to recruiters’ evaluations of those applicants. “Recruiters tended to give higher ratings to people who were in a relationship or married than to single job seekers,” Van Iddekinge says. “They also gave lower ratings to people who included some information about their religious beliefs than to people who didn’t include any religion information on Facebook.”

The study found potentially job-relevant information, like education, work-related training, and written communication skills that were displayed on social media were associated with better evaluations. “More negative behaviors, such as profanity, substance use, information about sexual behavior, and even information about illegal activities,” he says, “recruiters picked up on these types of information and gave lower ratings to the job seekers whose Facebook pages included such information.”

Anyone who’s looking for a job would be wise to “scrub” their social media accounts before applying, he says, because potential employers will certainly be looking. “We would never ask applicants to report on an application information about their race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, their religious beliefs, political beliefs and so on,” Van Iddekinge says, “but all of this information is widely available on social media. There’s really nothing regulating or prohibiting employers from looking up this information.”

Caution is recommended on all sides, when you’re posting information about yourself online and for potential employers who are harvesting those personal tidbits. “It’s hard to blame organizations who very easily can look up a job applicant to see if there are any red flags,” he says, “but the problem is, once you get exposed to this information, it’s very difficult to set it aside and focus on more job-relevant information.”

The study is being published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.